The Tree of Woe takes a victory lap concerning his prediction about the end of the US dollar hegemony:
In his novel Goldfinger, Ian Fleming famously said “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” We’re well past three events. This is not a “trend”. This is a globally coordinated action against the petrodollar and there’s no mistaking what it means.
It means the Petrodollar System that has served as the bedrock of world finance since the 1970s is over.
It means I’ve been proven right even faster than I expected.
What is altogether depressing, yet not at all surprising, is how the press coverage of these shocking events has (a) utterly misunderstood their causality and (b) grossly underestimated their gravity. I’m going to use article over at VisualCapitalist.com as my punching bag because it so perfectly captures everything that’s wrong with our mainstream elite… Being either ignorant of or unwilling to acknowledge the petro-military basis of our financial order, VisualCapitalist.com then proceeds to misdiagnose the reason for the dollar’s precipitous decline, writing:
Concerned about America’s dominance over the global financial system and the country’s ability to ‘weaponize’ it, other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony…
They have entirely confused cause and effect. Other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony since, well, since the dollar has been hegemonic. All prior “tests” have resulted in the destructing of whichever regime was performing the test. Ask Muammar Gaddafi how his gold dinar worked out.
As I documented in Running on Empty (now available as a book!), since 1971 America’s dominance over the global financial system has been based on America’s military dominance over the Middle East. Now that America’s military dominance has declined, athe country’s dominance over global finance has declined, too. Therefore, the honest way to report the news would be to say:
Unconcerned about America’s purported military dominance and tired of the country’s increasingly punitive attempts to ‘weaponize’ the dollar to make up for it, nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony…
Because that is what is actually happening. Of course no one will say that.
And what will be the consequences of this global event? Our friends at VisualCapitalist.com assert:
Despite these movements, few expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon.
And they’re right. Very few experts expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon. That’s because the majority of experts are too stupid to realize it’s already ended.
He’s absolutely right. It’s already over, and every single day, we’re seeing more countries taking steps to free themselves of the economic chains imposed by the petrodollar. The key, as the Tree of Woe repeatedly points out, is that the decline of the US military combined with the rise of the Chinese and Russian militaries, means that the nations of the world are free agents for the first time in seven decades.
As I pointed out in a recent Darkstream, the reason all the Clown World intellectuals declared the absolute necessity of winning the war in Ukraine, much to the confusion of the people of the USA and Europe who don’t understand why Ukraine matters when Afghanistan didn’t, is because Ukraine clearly shows the limits of US military power. And the whole system rested on the idea that any nation that attempted to evade the dollar tax would be punished with military invasion and regime change.
But the global superpower is no more. Everyone can see that the Empire has no army. Which means the nations are now free to buy and sell as they choose, in whatever medium of exchange they choose, rather than having to pay a tax to the US bankers on every single transaction. And the rapidity with which each of the steps taken by countries from Argentina to India, and from Brazil to Malaysia, indicates the eagerness with which the peoples of the world seek to free themselves from their dollar chains.