The BRICS Nations are set to discuss the de-dollarization of their economies at the upcoming BRICS Summit.
SABC News reported:
The US dollar might be losing its steam. The BRICS nations will discuss the de-dollarization of their economies at the upcoming summit here in South Africa. This has become a hot topic especially after the West slapped Russia with sweeping sanctions. SABC News Reporter Khayelihle Khumalo has more.
Ahead of the BRICS Summit, there have been reports suggesting that emerging market heavyweights - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are thinking of ditching the US dollar in an attempt to trade with a more common currency. Business Day TV caught up with Chair of the BRICS council Busi Mabuza, and discussed the viability of this move.
India will offer its currency as an alternative for trade to countries that are facing a shortage of dollars in the wake of the sharpest tightening in monetary policy by the US Federal Reserve in decades.
DITCH PETRODOLLAR! BRAZIL FRANCE ISRAEL REPLACE U.S. DOLLAR WITH CHINESE YUAN, NO LONGER ALLIES?
On March 31, it was reported that France became the first European country in the West to sign a trade agreement allowing payment in yuan instead of dollars or euros. The state-owned company Total, the world's second-largest LNG giant, was the first to carry the flag of de-dollarization, signing the first LNG purchase agreement with a Chinese state-owned oil company to pay in yuan, while the gas was imported from the United Arab Emirates. This new landscape in global energy markets and international reserve asset space now suggests that the role of the U.S. dollar is being weakened or shared, especially as landmarks of de-dollarization by several major Middle Eastern oil-producing countries, represented by Saudi Arabia, Iran and others, continue to emerge and be exploited.
The European Central Bank, Switzerland, Japan, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Bank for International Settlements have formed a digital currency development group to bypass the centrality of the dollar. The SHTA trade facility being developed in Switzerland to help the Iranian central bank settle cross-border has also carried out a number of international transactions that bypass the dollar settlement. Switzerland has officially started the process of building a yuan hub, replacing some of its dollar reserves with yuan by selling off dollars in the international reserve space.
The American people are pulling money out of banks at a rate which, during March, saw the biggest drop in Bank Deposits in U.S. History!
The image above from the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (BOG) shows the sudden and dramatic change in Bank Deposits; it’s staggering.
For the month of March, 2023, banks inside the USA saw $389 BILLION Dollars taken out by US citizens and companies!
Even at the height of the “Great Financial Crisis” of the year 2008, not a single monthly decline in 2008 exceeded $100 billion. Since the recent high, total deposits in the US are now down a record $1 trillion.
So where is the money going?
Well, it certainly isn’t going to pay down debt. Americans debt remains at the highest levels it has seen in decades.
Auto loan and credit card interest rates just hit a new record high. Average interest rates:
– Credit Card: 24.5%
– Used Cars: 14.0%
– New Cars: 9.0%
Meanwhile, we have record levels of debt:
– Total Household Debt: $16.5 trillion
– Auto Loans: $1.6 trillion
– Credit Card Debt: $986 billion
The worst part? Student loans just hit a record $1.6 trillion. Interest on student loans has been suspended since 2020, but it set to resume this year. The debt crisis is real.
WHERE’S IT GOING?
So if the cash is coming out of banks, but not paying down debt, where is the money going?
Americans are “prepping.” They are buying the things they think they might need if everything goes to hell in a handbasket.
Sure, they’re buying shelf-stable foods that stay good for a long time: Pasta, Rice, Beans, canned tuna and canned meats, jarred sauces, and the like. But they are also buying interesting things: Generators to power their homes during an outage. Solar power systems for off-grid power or power during outages. TOOLS! Americans are buying tools like there’s no tomorrow; from simple sets of screwdrivers, wrenches and sockets, hammers, and manual saws, to power tools like saws, drills, nail guns, and the like.
Interestingly, Americans are also buying spare OIL for their vehicles, space oil filters, air filters, and even fuel filters for those who own diesel powered vehicles. Believe it or not, Americans are also buying spare brake pads for their vehicles in numbers far above the “typical” amount.
Quietly, a big item now being sold far and wide: Home safes. Not the cheap kind with digital keypads that might get wiped out by an electro-magnetic pulse. Real safes; with dial combination locks and keys. The fireproof and burglar proof kind that sell for several hundred dollars (or more) each. So clearly, Americans are keeping some of the cash at home, just in case.
It as though Americans see a complete collapse of society coming, and they want to make certain they have what they will need during the six months to a year they think it might take to put basic things back together again – or at least keep the basics operating for awhile.
Ominously, Americans are also buying what it takes to PROTECT themselves if everything goes to hell: GUNS and AMMUNITION. Lots of it. Sales of handguns, shotguns, and rifles are through the roof! In fact, sales of Ammunition are so brisk, it’s hard to find common items like 9mm .357 and .40 caliber bullets for handguns, and very hard to find 12 Gauge shotgun shells. Rifle ammo is still in good supply, but stores are starting to see drawdowns on inventory of .308 and 7.62 rifle ammo.
Strangely, the money isn’t coming out in bank “Runs” but rather coming out slowly and very consistently.
To try to stem the outflow of money, Banks are now offering significantly higher interest rates as shown below.
Some Bank Officers say that if the trend from March continues through May, “a slew of banks will be forced to go under.” Banks, they say “simply cannot afford to have this level of withdrawals happening so consistently.”
Wednesday, April 5, 2023
The US Dollar is in big trouble and today’s guest shares why. Gerald Celente Sits down with Stephen Gardner to talk about the US dollar losing value, commercial real estate imploding, gold rising in value, the Biden administration, Russia Ukraine war, and banks failing. Check out www.trendsjournal.com to learn more.
by Tyler Durden
Wednesday, Apr 19, 2023 - 02:00 PM
Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com,
Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning his war cycles are going up. Nenner also predicted a few years back that, at some point, the U.S. dollar cycle would be headed down—way down.
The future is here, and Nenner explains, “We have known each other for many years, and I said the dollar is going to hold up, but not anymore, not anymore..."
" It is really in trouble. There is actually no reason to be in the dollar. They especially underestimate this BRICS situation, and all the countries will be forming an anti-dollar. . . . Saudi Arabia is coming onboard, and that means the end of the dollar as the reserve currency.”
Nenner says his cycles see, “The dollar going down to 70 on the dollar index.” It’s a bit over 100 now, but it gets worse. Nenner points out,
“I don’t want people to get depressed, but I am really worried. If the U.S. does not rule the world any more... They think they can still tell the world what to do.
Physically, the Americans are in danger, and they don’t seem to understand that...The economy is really going to suffer.
If the dollar goes really low, we could have a small bounce in the economy because it’s good for exports.
That’s just a fooling bounce for people. Longer term, it’s just finished.”
Nenner says the signs are clear in the cycle that:
“America is at the end of empire... The United States is going backwards, and it is not number one anymore.”
On the war cycle, Nenner has been forecasting a huge loss of life coming. Nenner is predicting:
“30% of the people on Earth will die in the next war cycle. . . . We are like at the end of civilization of the United States. It’s not that we are all going to drop dead, but it’s the end of civilization. The same issues that finished other countries like bad education, too many outstanding loans and people will become too lazy to really do hard work. That usually means the end of an empire.”
Nenner also talks about the top in the real estate market and why commercial and residential are on their way down for a long time.
Nenner also talks about a “coming Great Depression style crash” in the no-so-distant future. Nenner also brought up that big banks are contacting him to consult on buying physical gold because “they want to survive what is coming.”
Nenner says big banks are building their own vaults to make sure governments do not confiscate their yellow metal.
Nenner gives a sign to look for when the economy is going into a recession that has a 100% track record.
Finally, Nenner predicts,
“We are going to have a bad dollar. That usually means people are going to dump their securities...
If you have China and Russia dumping their U.S. bonds, you are going to have a problem.
What I see on my cycle is...The rates that went up stop in June... I am getting very worried because there might be a run for safety.”
Nenner is worried about war, and not just in Ukraine. Nenner is looking at war in Taiwan, South Korea, and the Middle East with Iran. Nenner says,
“I think you could have all these wars at the same time. . . . It’s endless possibilities. . . . I think they will all act at the same time. Wouldn’t you? You are waiting for the right moment, and if the United states get weaker and busy. . . . That’s the time to do whatever you want.”
Nenner points out, “Warren Buffett sold most of his Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing shares last week.”
There is much more in the 37- minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes One-on-One with renowned cycle analyst and financial expert Charles Nenner. (4.18.23)
** Dolllar Finished – America in Danger – Charles Nenner**
by Tyler Durden
Friday, Apr 28, 2023 - 10:40 PM
Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,
The US dollar is essential to US global power projection. But in 2022, the dollar share of reserve currencies slid 10 times faster than the average in the past two decades...
It is now established that the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency is eroding. When corporate western media begins to attack the multipolar world’s de-dollarization narrative in earnest, you know the panic in Washington has fully set in.
The numbers: the dollar share of global reserves was 73 percent in 2001, 55 percent in 2021, and 47 percent in 2022. The key takeaway is that last year, the dollar share slid 10 times faster than the average in the past two decades.
Now it is no longer far-fetched to project a global dollar share of only 30 percent by the end of 2024, coinciding with the next US presidential election.
The defining moment – the actual trigger leading to the Fall of the Hegemon – was in February 2022, when over $300 billion in Russian foreign reserves were “frozen” by the collective west, and every other country on the planet began fearing for their own dollar stores abroad. There was some comic relief in this absurd move, though: the EU “can’t find” most of it.
Now cue to some current essential developments on the trading front.
Over 70 percent of trade deals between Russia and China now use either the ruble or the yuan, according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov.
Russia and India are trading oil in rupees. Less than four weeks ago, Banco Bocom BBM became the first Latin American bank to sign up as a direct participant of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which is the Chinese alternative to the western-led financial messaging system, SWIFT.
China’s CNOOC and France’s Total signed their first LNG trade in yuan via the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange.
The deal between Russia and Bangladesh for the construction of the Rooppur nuclear plant will also bypass the US dollar. The first $300 million payment will be in yuan, but Russia will try to switch the next ones to rubles.
Russia and Bolivia’s bilateral trade now accepts settlements in Boliviano. That’s extremely pertinent, considering Rosatom’s drive to be a crucial part of the development of lithium deposits in Bolivia.
Notably, many of those trades involve BRICS countries – and beyond. At least 19 nations have already requested to join BRICS+, the extended version of the 21st century’s major multipolar institution, whose founding members are Brazil, Russia, India, and China, then South Africa. The foreign ministers of the original five will start discussing the modalities of accession for new members in an upcoming June summit in Capetown.
BRICS, as it stands, is already more relevant to the global economy than the G7. The latest IMF figures reveal that the existing five BRICS nations will contribute 32.1 percent to global growth, compared to the G7’s 29.9 percent.
With Iran, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Turkey, Indonesia, and Mexico as possible new members, it is clear that key Global South players are starting to focus on the quintessential multilateral institution capable of smashing Western hegemony.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) are working in total sync as Moscow’s partnership with Riyadh in OPEC+ metastasizes into BRICS+, in parallel to the deepening Russia-Iran strategic partnership.
MbS has willfully steered Saudi Arabia toward Eurasia’s new power trio Russia-Iran-China (RIC), away from the US. The new game in West Asia is the incoming BRIICSS – featuring, remarkably, both Iran and Saudi Arabia, whose historic reconciliation was brokered by yet another BRICS heavyweight, China.
Importantly, the evolving Iran-Saudi rapprochement also implies a much closer relationship between the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as a whole and the Russia-China strategic partnership.
This will translate into complementary roles – in terms of trade connectivity and payment systems – for the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), linking Russia-Iran-India, and the China-Central-Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor, a key plank of Beijing’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Today, only Brazil, with its President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva caged by the Americans and an erratic foreign policy, runs the risk of being relegated by the BRICS to the status of a secondary player.
The de-dollarization train has been propelled to high-speed status by the accumulated effects of Covid-linked supply chain chaos and collective western sanctions on Russia.
The essential point is this: The BRICS have the commodities, and the G7 controls finance. The latter can’t grow commodities, but the former can create currencies – especially when their value is linked to tangibles like gold, oil, minerals, and other natural resources.
Arguably the key swing factor is that pricing for oil and gold is already shifting to Russia, China, and West Asia.
In consequence, demand for dollar-denominated bonds is slowly but surely collapsing. Trillions of US dollars will inevitably start to go back home – shattering the dollar’s purchasing power and its exchange rate.
The fall of a weaponized currency will end up smashing the whole logic behind the US’ global network of 800+ military bases and their operating budgets.
Since mid-March, in Moscow, during the Economic Forum of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CSI) – one of the key inter-government organizations in Eurasia formed after the fall of the USSR – further integration is being actively discussed between the CSI, the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS.
Eurasian organizations coordinating the counterpunch to the current western-led system, which tramples on international law, was not by accident one of the key themes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s speech at the UN earlier this week. It is also no accident that four member-states of the CIS – Russia and three Central Asian “stans” – founded the SCO along with China in June 2001.
The Davos/Great Reset globalist combo, for all practical purposes, declared war on oil immediately after the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. They threatened OPEC+ to isolate Russia – or else, but failed humiliatingly. OPEC+, effectively run by Moscow-Riyadh, now rules the global oil market.
Western elites are in a panic. Especially after Lula’s bombshell on Chinese soil during his visit with Xi Jinping, when he called on the whole Global South to replace the US dollar with their own currencies in international trade.
Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), recently told the New York-based Council of Foreign Relations – the heart of the US establishment matrix – that “geopolitical tensions between the US and China could raise inflation by 5 percent and threaten the dominance of the dollar and euro.”
The monolithic spin across western mainstream media is that BRICS economies trading normally with Russia “creates new problems for the rest of the world.” That’s utter nonsense: it only creates problems for the dollar and the euro.
The collective west is reaching Desperation Row – now timed with the astonishing announcement of a Biden-Harris US presidential ticket running again in 2024. This means that the US administration’s neo-con handlers will double down on their plan to unleash an industrial war against both Russia and China by 2025.
And that brings us back to de-dollarization and what will replace the hegemonic reserve currency of the world. Today, the GCC represents more than 25 percent of global oil exports (Saudi Arabia stands at 17 percent). More than 25 percent of China’s oil imports come from Riyadh. And China, predictably, is the GCC’s top trading partner.
The Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange went into business in March 2018. Any oil producer, from anywhere, can sell in Shanghai in yuan today. This means that the balance of power in the oil markets is already shifting from the US dollar to the yuan.
The catch is that most oil producers prefer not to keep large stashes of yuan; after all, everyone is still used to the petrodollar. Cue to Beijing linking crude futures in Shanghai to converting yuan into gold. And all that without touching China’s massive gold reserves.
This simple process happens via gold exchanges set up in Shanghai and Hong Kong. And not by accident, it lies at the heart of a new currency to bypass the dollar being discussed by the EAEU.
Dumping the dollar already has a mechanism: making full use of the Shanghai Energy Exchange’s future oil contracts in yuan. That’s the preferred path for the end of the petrodollar.
US global power projection is fundamentally based on controlling the global currency. Economic control underlies the Pentagon’s ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ doctrine. Yet now, even military projection is in shambles, with Russia maintaining an unreachable advance on hypersonic missiles and Russia-China-Iran able to deploy an array of carrier-killers.
The Hegemon – clinging to a toxic cocktail of neoliberalism, sanction dementia, and widespread threats – is bleeding from within. De-dollarization is an inevitable response to system collapse. In a Sun Tzu 2.0 environment, it is no wonder the Russia-China strategic partnership exhibits no intention of interrupting the enemy when he is so busy defeating himself.
