I'm quite interested in this, as at the moment, at least in BTC and gold bug circles, the subject of the USDs reign coming to an end comes up a lot, peak 4th turning vibes.
Then of course, there are many mainstream economists who don't seem to conceive that the US could ever not be number one, massive hubris.
At times in the past, gbp was the 'king' currency, before that the French Franc and Dutch Gilder before that. So each time, the reserve currency belongs to the dominant trade and military power of the era, and the transition always happens when that power declines relative to a rising one (cue Solomon Satoshi).
The average reserve currency reign is roughly 80–110, and the dollar is in its 82nd year, if we count Bretton Woods as the start of the USD as global reserve currency.
Did any economists of the past manage to call the end of their respective currencies' global reserve status? and what do you stackers think, how much longer might the USD be the dominant global currency?
Yes, I think plenty of commentators say the death of the pound via/during the World Wars. Also, many famous economists saw the death of Bretton Woods (e.g., Triffin, Rueff) -- even though that wasn't the end of the dollar's reign.
were they classed as fudders of the day by those in denial, or do you think to most it was quite obvious?
For Tiffin/Rueff, I believe they were well-respected and believed. For the pound, losses during wars were so obvious that there was no denying Britain losing its place (except, crucially, among the elite decision-makers, e.g., returning pound to gold at prewar rate)
It's difficult to predict how long the dollar's dominance will last. The only thing I can say with certainty is that it's not going to improve. Our salvation is Bitcoin, the only truly free global currency.
In defense of my colleagues, it's probably more a lack of imagination and understanding.
Everyone overestimates how much economists know or think about money.
Do you think economists are more or less respected now, compared to the past?
I often think of the economist professor from The Mandibles these days lol
I don’t know how respected economists used to be but there’s very little respect for the profession right now (largely deserved).
Ridicule the messenger all you like.
You only do so cannot credibly refute the facts.
Maduro is in jail and the Ayatollah is dead. Winnie-the-Pooh is next.
racist
Before we can understand the history, we have to drill down into the layers of what constitutes a currency. Gold and silver were invented by God, but they are assigned value by the human mind, so the various governments that standardized gold and silver coinage were operating on top of those layers. Their ability to debase and subvert the currency (that is, to debase and subvert the human mind) were heavily restrained by God's physical laws, because otherwise there could be no human progress at all. The transition to fiat currency was the collectivists' attempt to subdue the individual mind by replacing God. Yet, in doing so they paved the way for God's ultimate goal: for individuals to fulfill his will not because of physical constraints, but out of voluntary choice. Bitcoin represents the combined efforts of individuals to restore God's will on earth. The monetary transition from a commodity-backed ledger, to a government-mandated ledger, to a work-backed ledger, is what Jesus illustrated with the crucifixion. Those are the only three types of currencies which have existed in the universe. Everything else is a cosmetic distinction.
With that out of the way, we can get into the particulars of our planet. Despite its name and the portraits, USD is not representative of the US as a nation. It attained its status primarily with the post-WWII consensus and a serious of compromises in the aftermath, so it's really FDR's legacy. Roosevelt was a New England Democrat. What is the culture of New England? Those are the Roundheads of 17th century England, then the Puritan witch hunters of Massachusetts, and now Antifa in Portland. And what is the Democrat Party? It's the party of Andrew Jackson, of the Confederacy, and further devolved into the Marxists that we know today.
The USD, therefore, is a dynastic consensus among the most radically violent pro-tax elements of American society. They survive by denying their history while projecting their lust for violence and control onto their opposition.
Contrast that with the President who institutionalized BTC. Trump is a mixed-race descendant of Scottish and German immigrants. His father dodged a draft and disavowed the socialist dictatorship of his home country, seeking instead to build private wealth through peaceful trade. Trump's governing philosophy is derived from a combination of personal experience, Randian capitalism, and a basic respect for common Western values. He won because his cultural background more closely resonates with the experience of the majority of US citizens.
Yet, that is the very reason he elicits such rabid, secessionist rage from his opponents. They see that the imperial throne has been usurped. Trump has total control over the money printer that they had intended to use for themselves. He is willing to cut his own empire in half if need be, to protect the monetization of a currency which the US will not control except by adopting it early. It is perhaps historically unprecedented for an exiled dynasty to attain this much power this quickly.
@Solomonsatoshi understands none of this because he's retarded. He barely sees any difference between the US and Britain. He just sees a bunch of white people and he's mad that for some reason their country got richer than his, completely ignoring the universally applicable principles that enabled the industrial revolution. He complains about the Opium Wars but fails to learn the lesson of the Opium Wars, which is not "build a better navy." The lesson is that you can't tax and conquer your way into a powerful military. It was peaceful capitalist prosperity that enabled wartime success. And to claim that the Chavez and Castro regimes, the IRGC, and the PRC rogue state are peaceful while the West are the aggressors is just typical statist gaslighting. People who understand that taxation is a form of aggression can tell who's instigating the violence.
What Trump intuitively grasps, which the Quakers who betrayed the American Revolution didn't (and many of their descendants are still not getting) is that, sadly, a new moral paradigm, such as the abolition of slavery and now the complete separation of economy and state, can only find lasting respect in society through revolution, which inevitably means war, because the world's entire legal system and cultural precedents are stacked against it.
This brings us to Ayn Rand's conception of war, which posits that war is only the second greatest evil perpetrated by man. The first is dictatorship. War is justified when conducted in response to dictatorship.
Trump's strategy, then, easily replicable despite any setbacks and fully protected by the Mandate of Heaven, is to finance the total annihilation of socialism by taxing the socialists with the full force of statist methods which they enabled. Print money to buy Bitcoin, tax blue states to fund attacks on their own allies among the drug cartels, etc. Opponents of the separation of economy and state will have their economies ripped asunder by the state. For the dedicated enemies of individual rights and laissez-faire capitalism it is simply a matter of repent or die.
The Gadsden flag will proudly follow the flag with Blue Sky, White Sun, and a Wholly Red Earth as it did for the Stars and Stripes. The Three Principles will not perish from this Earth. This is how the Ledger of Highest Peace secures its destiny as the last world reserve currency. By overthrowing the Qing and restoring the Ming, we will have a new world where each man is free to exist for his own sake.
The Great Reset belongs to us. We can be grateful to have enemies dumb enough and arrogant enough to grant us a casus belli.
The French livre actually had a wild warning shot that nobody heeded. John Law convinced the French Regent to back the livre with shares in the Mississippi Company in 1716. It worked spectacularly for about four years. The livre-to-share peg created what was arguably the first modern reserve currency mechanism, backed not by metal but by colonial revenue projections.
When the bubble popped in 1720, the livre lost roughly 90% of purchasing power in months. France didn't fully recover monetary credibility for decades. The kicker: Law had explicitly written that a currency backed by land and productive assets would outperform gold backing. He was directionally right but fatally wrong on the trust mechanism.
The pattern every time is the same. The incumbent never sees it coming because their economists measure stability in terms of the very unit that is failing. Hard to see the yardstick shrinking when you are using it to measure everything else.