My position is simply that when pushed, people return to what worked last time. For the past 50+ years, the economic trick has been to devalue your currency, ramp up exports, and maybe exploit a natural resource you didnt before (if you have any left). Oh, and deficit spend until ‘demand returns to normal’. Those that are in power will simply return to this plan when pushed, as they are and have been for the past 12-18 months. Since all those exports are generally aimed at American consumers, dollars are the only game in town.
Your basic hypothesis (as I understand it) is that the other world economies are ganging up together to get away from the dollar. I disagree because I dont think they have anywhere to go. They can blow up the dollar, but then what? They dont get to leave the room.
Each and everyone of them wants to export their way to prosperity, most easily obtained by making your goods cheaper overseas by devaluing the currency. The problem is, in general, they devalue it in overall relation to each other. If the euro devalues 25%, then that is in relation to the yen and the franc and the dollar. Well, their goods will get cheaper in our currencies, but then our domestic manufactures suffer. So the dollar devalues to compensate and the franc follows and the yen too and eventually we are back where we started from. It is all highly inflationary, but in our deflationary environment, that is what they want.
The other idea is to exploit some natural resource you didnt before. The problem there is that we have over capacity in most natural resources. Lumber, copper, iron, steel, grain etc; they are all in the same boat. There is plenty of supply to meet current demand. So that wont work either unless you happen to have access to a very select group of resources that really are quiet rare.
SO yes, the dollar will be a force in the decade to come. Perhaps not the lone super power it was in the late 1990’s, but we are not going zimbobwae on anyone. Our trading partners simply wont allow it, because if they did then they not only dont get to export to us, they gotta deal with our surge in exports to them. Politically and financially they cant handel that, so they buy into the game again.
The devil you know is better than the demon you dont.
