Foreign Policy Category Archive

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The Digital Yuan: Will It End the Dollar Dictatorship?

Eric Striker • May 16, 2020

• 800 Words • 10 Comments • Reply

In mid-April, the US Federal Reserve began "swapping" $500 billion dollars with banks around the world. The almighty dollar is virtually the only chip you can use in the international capitalist casino. Globally, non-American banks hold $12.4 trillion dollars, which they loan out to other non-American entities for loans, to pay debts, or to conduct... Read More

A China yuan banknote featuring late Chinese chairman Mao Zedong and a computer keyboard are seen reflected on an image of Chinese flag in this illustration picture taken November 1, 2019. REUTERS/Florence Lo/Illustration - RC14C5905790

Get Ready for the Next Game-Changer: the Digital Yuan

Pepe Escobar • May 5, 2020

• 1,200 Words • 166 Comments • Reply

A new, radical paradigm shift is in progress. The U.S. economy may shrink as much as 40% in the first semester of 2020. China, already the world’s largest economy by PPP for a few years now, may soon become the world’s largest economy even in exchange rate terms. The post-Planet Lockdown world – still a... Read More

The Economics of American Super Imperialism

How the US Makes Countries Pay for Its Wars

Michael Hudson • April 24, 2020

• 7,200 Words • 113 Comments • Reply

Economist Michael Hudson explains how American imperialism has created a global free lunch, where the US makes foreign countries pay for its wars, and even their own military occupation. Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss the economics of Washington’s empire, the role of the IMF and World Bank, attempts to create alternative financial systems like... Read More

The Saker Interviews Michael Hudson

The Saker and Michael Hudson • January 9, 2020

• 2,400 Words • 79 Comments • Reply

The Saker: Trump has been accused of not thinking forward, of not having a long-term strategy regarding the consequences of assassinating General Soleimani. Does the United States in fact have a strategy in the Near East, or is it only ad hoc? Michael Hudson: Of course American strategists will deny that the recent actions do... Read More

America Escalates Its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East

Michael Hudson • January 5, 2020

• 3,700 Words • 188 Comments • Reply

The mainstream media are carefully sidestepping the method behind America’s seeming madness in assassinating Islamic Revolutionary Guard general Qassim Suleimani to start the New Year. The logic behind the assassination this was a long-standing application of U.S. global policy, not just a personality quirk of Donald Trump’s impulsive action. His assassination of Iranian military leader... Read More

Dollar Recycling and de-Dollarization

Michael Hudson • November 24, 2019

• 1,400 Words • Leave a Comment

My book “Super Imperialism” was about how the United States has gained a free lunch by establishing the dollar as international reserve currency by replacing gold. I also showed that the U.S. balance of payments deficit is almost entirely military related to support its 800 bases around the world. Ending the gold-exchange standard in 1971... Read More

U.S. Economic Warfare and Likely Foreign Defenses

Michael Hudson • July 23, 2019

• 5,400 Words • 63 Comments • Reply

Today’s world is at war on many fronts. The rules of international law and order put in place toward the end of World War II are being broken by U.S. foreign policy escalating its confrontation with countries that refrain from giving its companies control of their economic surpluses. Countries that do not give the United... Read More

De-Dollarizing the American Financial Empire

Michael Hudson and Bonnie Faulkner • July 3, 2019

• 8,100 Words • 139 Comments • Reply

I’m Bonnie Faulkner. Today on Guns and Butter, Dr. Michael Hudson. Today’s show: De-Dollarizing the American Financial Empire. Dr. Hudson is a financial economist and historian. He is President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trend, a Wall Street Financial Analyst and Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri,... Read More

Saker Interview with Michael Hudson on Venezuela

The Saker and Michael Hudson • February 7, 2019

• 3,000 Words • 214 Comments • Reply

The Saker: Could you summarize the state of Venezuela’s economy when Chavez came to power? Michael Hudson: Venezuela was an oil monoculture. Its export revenue was spent largely on importing food and other necessities that it could have produced at home. Its trade was largely with the United States. So despite its oil wealth, it... Read More

Trump’s Brilliant Strategy to Dismember U.S. Dollar Hegemony

Michael Hudson • February 1, 2019

• 3,700 Words • 200 Comments • Reply

The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars... Read More

Placing the USA on a Collapse Continuum with Dmitry Orlov

The Saker • January 11, 2019

• 4,800 Words • 382 Comments • Reply

The word 'catastrophe' has several meanings, but in its original meaning in Greek the word means a "sudden downturn" (in Greek katastrophē ‘overturning, sudden turn,’ from kata- ‘down’ + strophē ‘turning’). As for the word "superpower" it also has several possible definitions, but my preferred one is this one "Superpower is a term used to... Read More

China Plans to Break Petrodollar Stranglehold

Beijing to set up oil-futures trading in the yuan which will be fully convertible into gold on the Shanghai and Hong...

Pepe Escobar • December 21, 2017

• 1,000 Words • Leave a Comment

Petrodollars have dominated the global energy markets for more than 40 years. But now, China is looking to change that by replacing the word dollars for yuan. Nations, of course, have tried this before since the system was set up by former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in tandem with the House of Saud... Read More

Washington Is Destroying American Power

Paul Craig Roberts • October 16, 2017

• 400 Words

Readers at home and around the world want to know what to make of the announcement that China henceforth will conduct oil purchases and sales in gold-backed Chinese currency. Is this an attack by Russia and China on the US dollar? Will the dollar weaken and collapse from being discarded as the currency in which... Read More

Russian Asset Seizure Hastens Decline of Dollar?

Ron Paul • June 21, 2015

• 600 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

While much of the world focused last week on whether or not the Federal Reserve was going to raise interest rates, or whether the Greek debt crisis would bring Europe to a crisis, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague awarded a $50 billion judgment to shareholders of the former oil company Yukos in... Read More

The Outlook for the New Year

Paul Craig Roberts • December 29, 2014

• 1,700 Words • 14 Comments

Washington has shaped 2015 to be a year of conflict. The conflict could be intense. Washington is the cause of the conflict, which has been brewing for some time. Russia was too weak to do anything about it when the Clinton regime pushed NATO to Russia’s borders and illegally attacked Yugoslavia, breaking the country into... Read More

Defending Dollar Imperialism

Ukraine War Driven by Gas-Dollar Link

Mike Whitney • December 1, 2014

• 2,600 Words • 8 Comments • Reply

If there was a way the United States could achieve its long-term strategic objectives and, at the same time, avoid a war with Russia, it would so. Unfortunately, that is not an option, which is why there’s going to be a clash between the two nuclear-armed adversaries sometime in the near future. Let me explain:... Read More

My Money’s on Putin

The Latest in the New Cold War

Mike Whitney • August 12, 2014

• 2,500 Words • 7 Comments • Reply

The United States failed operation in Syria, has led to an intensification of Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine. What the Obama administration hoped to achieve in Syria through its support of so called “moderate” Islamic militants was to topple the regime of Bashar al Ass

US Sanctions on Russia May Sink the Dollar

Ron Paul • August 10, 2014

• 700 Words • 1 Comment • Reply

The US government's decision to apply more sanctions on Russia is a grave mistake and will only escalate an already tense situation, ultimately harming the US economy itself. While the effect of sanctions on the dollar may not be appreciated in the short term, in the long run these sanctions are just another step toward... Read More

The Birth of the ‘de-Americanized’ World. Beijing Calls for Creation of New “Reserve Currency” to Replace the U.S. Dollar

Pepe Escobar • October 15, 2013

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

This is it. China has had enough. The (diplomatic) gloves are off. It’s time to build a “de-Americanized” world. It’s time for a “new international reserve currency” to replace the US dollar. It’s all here, in a Xinhua editorial, straight from the dragon’s mouth. And the year is only 2013. Fasten your seat belts –... Read More

Food Riots and Speculators

"A Massacre of the World's Poor"

Mike Whitney • April 26, 2008

• 800 Words • Leave a Comment

Food riots have broken out across the globe destabilizing large parts of the developing world. China is experiencing double-digit inflation. Indonesia, Vietnam and India have imposed controls over rice exports. Wheat, corn and soy beans are at record highs and threatening to go higher still. Commodities are up across the board. The World Food Program... Read More

"Dollar" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

China's Rise, America's Fall

Which superpower is more threatened by its “extractive elites”?

Ron Unz

• 431 Comments • Reply

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 390 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.