Russia And The End Of The Dollar

“I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure you can inflate construction costs and launder money through it.” – Ozark

I wonder if everyone can figure out why China built their own Internet now?

Biden has miscalculated.  Again.  As he has his entire life.  He has moved from one miscalculation in his life to the next.  So, it’s not surprising that perhaps the greatest failure in the history of the United States has shown up on his watch.  Let’s go, Brandon, indeed.

To be fair, it’s not entirely Brandon’s fault.  The United States economy, as I’ve gone to great pains to show over my posts, has been hollowed out over the years.  We have gone from one that manufactures things and exports goods to one that mainly manufactures movies (we’re very good at that) and consulting and intellectual property and Starbucks™.

The thing that we’ve been best at is printing and then exporting dollars.  For decades now, we have been exporting dollars that we printed and then importing stuff like fidget spinners and PEZ®.  It was a great deal for us.  People used those dollars and we got stuff, but it was essentially a global tax on the rest of the world.

That ability to tax, however, only works as long as people believe that the dollar is worth something, and that the holder of that economic power won’t bend the rules.  Just like the bank runs up in Canada started when Trudeau broke the promise that the banks won’t steal people’s money, so the same principle applies to international affairs.

What could go wrong, stealing cash from random people?

When Russia attacked Ukraine, Biden declared sanctions.  Sure that’s a fine idea when dealing with a tiny random country, but Russia isn’t tiny.  And Russia isn’t any random country.

See, one silver lining!

Russia is of huge importance to world commerce.  Russia exports the stuff that makes modern economies go:

  • Food
  • Steel
  • Fertilizer
  • Titanium
  • Nickel
  • Oil
  • Refined Fuels
  • Natural Gas
  • Coal
  • Gold

In almost every commodity listed above, Russia is in the top five exporting nations.  In several commodities, it is the world’s largest exporter.  Check out the graphs on energy and wheat when the market gets disrupted:

What does Russia import?

  • Telephones
  • Car Parts
  • Computers
  • Medicine

Russia also exports nearly double what it imports.  If there is a country that is nearly self-sufficient in this world, it’s Russia.  There is an economic concept called “autarky” – or a nationwide independence from imports.  Looking at the list of companies that are leaving Russia, well, could it be that Russia is better off without them?

Yes, Pornhub® and OnlyFans™ are on the list.  I wonder what the effects will be?  21-year-old girls will have to find jobs that involve wearing clothes?

Russia isn’t independent.  But it’s close enough.  Most things that it is missing can be bought from either India or China.  No iPhones®?  China has a bunch of other kinds of phones.  And all those businesses that left?  It’s not like the Russians don’t know how to make hamburger and buns, so McPutins™ could open up tomorrow, though I’d skip the polonium sauce.

Russians are talking about nationalizing all of the assets of companies that have abandoned them.  Why wouldn’t a country do that?  Well, other countries could seize the overseas Russian assets.

Oops.  Too late.  So what’s stopping the Russians?

What is the threat from the West?  That Russian audiences won’t have Netflix®?  The things that Russia has been denied are, frankly, not very scary.  They won’t get to see the next Marvel© movie?  Oh, yeah, they also went after Russia’s money and tried to cut it off from the dollar-based economic system and . . . entertainment.

The Babylon Bee has the real impact figured out.

What happens when that bluff is called, when Russia and China decide that they don’t need dollars?  What happens when Russia will sell natural gas to Europe only in yuan?  Or for gold?  Or that they won’t trade their commodities for anything at all?

The tent collapses, and by that tent I mean the dollar.

I actually think that Joe’s head is so far up . . . well, I’ll be kind and guess that he has Alzheimer’s rather than being this stupid.  Oddly, this is viewed as an ideological opportunity by the Leftist henchxirs in Washington.  They hate fossil fuels to the point of not caring about the relative plight of the American consumer.  Don’t believe me?  Listen to them:

Why would we want to solve problems?

Let them eat electric cars?

And Joe’s responsible for the invasion, too.

Leaked pictures from Joe’s energy briefing.

The goal.  No matter what it costs.

There are even well-meaning Lefties starting to write articles to cope with the failure:

But here’s a sign:  Joe tried to get meetings with the Saudis and the very friendly folks over at the United Arab Emirates.  They wouldn’t return his calls.  Imagine:  a foreign leader refusing to even talk with the President* of the United States.  It’s almost like he’s a fraud?

I wonder if he’s going to drunk-text the Emir tonight?

One person sums it up . . . .

Beyond that, the price of wheat is getting ready to go even higher.  Together, Russia and Ukraine produce over 25% of the wheat exported in the world.  A quarter.  Ukraine’s planting season has been slightly impacted by current events, and Russian exports might be diverted to feed Ukraine.

The United States is certainly self-sufficient in wheat, but the prices of wheat are like oil:  they’re tied to the international price.  What happens when a loaf of bread is six dollars?  Nothing good.  But if there are price controls?  Bread will be priced at two dollars.  There just won’t be any in stores.

Domestic inflation is bad enough, but what happens when the Saudis start taking gold for oil from the Chinese?  Or start paying for Russian wheat with the gold they got from the Chinese?  The dollar, once indispensable, is done as the international currency.

The message is loud and clear – the end of the dollar is near.  Why is gold up over $2,000?  My question is why is gold only up to $2,000?  I fully expect that, should Russia succeed, 90% of the dollar’s purchasing power will be gone in the next 14 months.

That will lead to massive changes in our economy, political unrest, and, potentially, the dissolution of the United States as we know it.

Thanks, Joe!  Where is ¡Jeb! when we need him?

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

64 thoughts on “Russia And The End Of The Dollar”

  1. The America people are not the problem, its in our “leaders” where you will find the burning hate and racism. We, as a people, would unite and solve all the problems but our “leaders” keep putting up fatal obstacles in our path. We need to rid ourselves of these vermin

    1. The America people are not the problem, its in our “leaders” where you will find the burning hate and racism. We, as a people, would unite and solve all the problems but our “leaders” keep putting up fatal obstacles in our path.

      Who do you think voted for those leaders, and accepted a stolen election, space aliens? Of course the problem is the American people. The biggest benefit of the Ron Paul presidential run was that for once Americans were actually offered a choice, and all they had to do was write him in. Most Americans rejected him, because most Americans want a communism where they take from other Americans, and think they can get this by voting. There is a Russian political analysis saying that translates as “Who, Whom?” Meaning, who pays, and who benefits? That’s the fundamental measurement of any political interaction.

      1. People everywhere want to brush off the responsibility for what they have created.

        “My Vote is important … OTOH, I bear no responsibility for the results.”

        Yes, you do. You endorsed the System, be it Good, or be it Evil. And, as we all SHOULD know, by now, it is always “Evil”.

    2. What’s your solution? Complaining? You need to be DOERS of the word, er world.

    3. Yeah, and incumbents have a consistent 90%+ re-election rate. Good luck with that.
      From BALLOTPEDIA:
      The incumbent win rate remained at or above 90% in all states but California, New Hampshire, Ohio, and West Virginia.
      The lowest overall incumbent win rate was in California with 85%. New Jersey was the only state to see a 100% incumbent win rate.
      Congressional incumbents had a 96% win rate. Thirty-eight states had a 100% win rate in congressional races.
      State-level incumbents had a 95% win rate. Five states had a 100% win rate in state-level races.
      Local-level incumbents had an 89% average win rate. Eight states had a 100% win rate in local-level races.

  2. Amen to all you have said above.

    Another key factor of note is that Russia has one of the world’s best ratios of government debt to GDP – something like 17% vs. the American 110% or so. The US Government is a LOT closer to default and collapse than Putin. Bottom line, the only holding up the US Government from complete bankruptcy is Bernanke/ Yellen/Powell and the low, low, artificially low, suicidally low interest rates since 2008 depicted here:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FEDFUNDS

    You might say that US interest rates have fallen and they can’t get up. When they tried, there was the so-called 2018 Wall Street “temper tantrum” – falling stock prices slammed the interest rate right back to zero to keep the show on the road. Now America is trapped like, oh, I dunno, some impotent 30 mile convoy in frozen mud. Sooner rather than later inflation missiles powered by endless stimmie checks are gonna create a endless wasteland of charred, burned out economic hulks that used to be shiny paper tigers. Or some twisted metaphor like that.

    1. Oops, US Debt / GDP is closer to 128%, not 110%. Check the chart at the bottom of this webpage:

      https://tradingeconomics.com/

      Inflation rate 7.5%, interest rate 0.25%. Madness. Utter madness. Dr. Fed and the Multiverse of Madness.

      1. Inflation 7.5%, interest rate 0.25% … sort of explains why TIPS bonds with a 0.125% interest rate are selling for $112 per $100 par value. Talk about “madness”: over ten years, that $100 bond earns a grand total of just $1.25 in cash dividends, and then you get your $100 back when it matures. However, the bond principal actually gets adjusted twice a year to compensate for inflation, and the dividend payments are based on the increased value, so the buyer might get back substantially more than one hundred dollars. That could be nice, but there’s another wrinkle in the sock: Whatever increase exceeds the purchase cost is taxable.

        1. “The government issuing your bond no longer exists.”
          [sounds of gunshots… execution or suicide?]

          1. Like a lifetime warranty on your [insert product name here].

            If the company offering it is no longer in business – it’s worthless!

    2. Yup, and if the interest rates don’t get up? The dollar will be worth more heating your house when you burn one.

  3. I woke and read this, and starting pricing bulk wheat berries and storage containers. Already got the yeast.
    I also will be pricing storage racks for the basement, to make it easier to access, and get things off the floor, should the basement experience some dampness. My sister had a great idea. Rather than put the shelving flush against the wall, she set them up like grocery shelving – accessible from both sides. It makes it easier to rotate your cans and bottles.

    1. At a visit to an old English monastery / museum, I learned that the rule of thumb for their pantry was “one pound of wheat per monk, per day”. That’s so convenient, I wonder whether it might have actually been the definition of the “pound”: the amount of wheat that you need for a daily ration. From that, we can define the pint: the volume of water that weighs a pound. Then the standard cup, half of that; the standard gallon, eight of those. (Powers of two are easy to manage with a double-pan balance.)

        1. John Wilder. Your humor is what makes the telling of doom so compelling. I sit here reading about dire consequences for our country and the world, totally agreeing with your assessment. But laughing all the way through it. Face it, you’re the Mary Poppins of the doom/preparedness/SHTF bloggers. Telling it like it is with humor. AKA, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
          The memes today were rockin’! So freaking funny!
          But even though I laugh, I am as prepared as I can be, but still ratholing away as much as I can.
          The main thing to remember is you can’t think of everything to store, there will be surprises. So don’t think of your preps as the end all, be all. Think of them as the means to have an easier transition to being more self sufficient and basically a harder life. Adapt and survive.

        2. Lol. Great minds…
          : )
          I ordered grapes for my garden. Learning fermenting. Thinking ahead.

      2. During a tour of the monastery playfully called ‘Camp Lejeune’ by those sharply-dressed resident devotees, we learned they carry half their body-weight in ammunition.
        True fact…

    2. Linda, you made my morning :-). You looked at the Big Circle and promptly thought HOW it would affect your Little Circle and am DOING SOMETHING about it.

      Do you know how to make Yeast from potatoes and whole wheat? Worth learning, might be a trade item if your area starts growing their own wheat. I had a Pancake Garden last year, grew a 10 X 20 wheat patch. Not that difficult to do or process.

      Looks like this year my Pancake patch is going to triple in size. Might like the little Red Hen need some neighbor help to do it.

      A few trusted friends a real treasure when things get stupid. Helps share the cost of fuel for shopping trips, splits the shopping duties and a small mob hates seeing a half dozen folks willing to defend together. Solo families are so much the easier target.

      Did frontier families stay home when Indian Troubles occurred or did they mob up at the central fort like structure?

      Asking for a friend.

      1. Michael, you can make your own natural yeast from nothing more than water and whole wheat flour. It’s what gives true sourdough bread its rise. In some places, natural yeast will give a slight sour flavor to your bread, while in others, it imparts no sour flavor at all. It mainly depends on what yeast spores exist naturally in the air where you ferment your sourdough starter.

        My wife makes almost all of our bread from wheat we buy from farmers and grind ourselves. We haven’t purchased yeast in nearly a decade. The basic recipe for the bread is whole wheat flour that we grind in our own mill, water, and salt. The basic recipe for the sourdough starter is water and whole wheat flour and time to properly ferment. Using this method creates some of the most gorgeous and satisfying bread I’ve ever eaten. By adding eggs, potato flakes, and/or oil, you can also create various European style breads from the same basic recipe using straight whole wheat flour.

        Now for the bad news, if you haven’t already stored wheat for the long term (it will keep nearly forever when properly stored), then you might be getting in on this a little late. Last fall’s harvest is about gone and, except for some very early Texas wheat, most of this year’s winter wheat harvest won’t hit until May, by which time, it may already be sold before it’s even harvested, thus the extreme hockey stick that’s nearly vertical in the wheat market. Whether more is produced will be determined by whether or not farmers can still make money with high fuel and oil prices. If oil goes up faster than wheat, don’t expect much of a crop this year, either. Now is a very good time to start growing your own food, if you can. If you can, grow enough to feed most of your neighborhood. If you and all of your friends do that, you might have the numbers to defend your food supply against the inevitable starving hordes and encroaching government bureaucrats that claim you’re hoarding food.

  4. “Buttplug sez…”

    To me, it’s shocking that 1/3 of Americans believe these morons.

  5. I am interested, in part, in the way that our rulers seem to think that the crucial issue around oil is transportation. This is only partially true, in my view.
    Where does all the plastic for the latest I-thingy come from? Electric cars are built in factories that do not run exclusively on solar power, to say nothing of the components thereof.
    To exclude EIOER factors, and to continue to push things like ethanol and wind power, electric cars, and worm-based foods, and to insist that we will all be perfectly okay with this for their reasons, is absolute madness.
    I just…. wonder at the sheer mindlessness of it all. The stupid, it burns…

  6. As usual, your analysis is spot on. And terrifying. It should be mentioned that while Brandon is the doddering old fool figurehead ostensibly pushing forward on the stick as the plane accelerates into the ground, he’s not the one telling him to lower his altitude. The people behind the curtain–most likely Obama, Schwab, et al–are yelling in his ear, “Dive! Dive! Dive!” They–and the rest of the “leaders” in our government–do this because they hate America, and her people. They have been taught to believe, with religious fervor I might add, that the US is the cause of all the world’s problems and needs to be brought low.

    The end result is the same, but I think we need to continually reinforce the message that this is not our fate because the most popular president in history turned out to be an Alzheimer’s patient. No, this is our fate because there are people behind the throne who hate us, and I mean really hate us, and want to see us destroyed. Much like the twin towers, this is a controlled demolition of the US. Only it’s spinning out of control.

    1. I’d argue they think they can survive the coming storm.
      Most of them have bunkers and guards with guns Mundanes can’t hope to purchase.
      However.
      Those guards have families to feed, are they also going into the bunker?
      Or are they going to take their last paycheck in the form of “whatever supplies fit in a vehicle”.

      Time will tell.

      I’d also argue that the dollar becoming worthless green printed rectangles would be worse than a nuke war, because at least for a while there’d be a lot of angry people who take it out on the neighbor they see has eaten recently.

      1. hahaha…if i was one of their guards, i’d just throw them out into the street and move MY family into their bunker and take all their shit

      2. If what happened with the New Orleans police during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is any clue, they will go to protect their families.

        However look out if Brandon runs off o Camp David for a long term vaccination. Because there’s e tunnel from the POTUS lodge fight to Raven Rock Mountain.

    2. And don’t forget, it’s in economic turmoil times like these that Soros makes his real money.
      Almost might make you think he helps engineer these kind of environments on purpose.

  7. If a former big shot rattles a saber and no one cares, should the saber-rattler be rattled?

    Asking for a craven, illegitimate administration.

    TIL that in Russia, autarky sanctions you.

  8. Russia hasn’t been able to feed itself five years out of any ten since 1900, and they haven’t had any hard currency to buy anything of actual (as opposed to Russian) quality unless they exported actual goods to get it. That option has largely evaporated, since the end of February.

    And don’t expect anyone to start paying for things with gold. In five to ten years, the Arabs have all the gold, and then everything collapses. Then what?

    In the meantime, every five minutes, Putin threatens to nuke everyone. Eventually, someone decides he’s crying “Wolf!”, and tests his bluff. At which point, win or lose, Russia ceases to exist, either because the threat is hollow, or because Russia is glowing, with much of its real estate returning to earth in clouds of isotopes.

    There is no “win” scenario in this for Russia that doesn’t involve Putin’s head on a platter, and another couple of decades as international pariah, and that’s only if they stop now. If they continue, they’ll need to strip troops out of places they can’t afford to leave unprotected, otherwise half the country will declare independence, and Russia will be fighting a dozen regional conflicts, and that’s before neighboring nations go after a piece of them as well. Including China. Especially now that the abysmal capabilities of Russian troops are seen daily on the news in 140 countries.

    Recall that the last two nations to elect to take on the whole world were Iraq and Afghanistan (it ended poorly for them), and the next two will be the Norks, and Iran, both on the short list for “Most Likely To Spontaneously Start Exploding”.

    NATO is feckless and incompetent for the most part, but when you simultaneously get Germany to spend real money on guns for the first time since 1945, and get the Swiss to drop neutrality, the fit has hit the shan for Vlad.
    The next invasion in Central Europe is liable to be eastbound.

    1. Wellllll . . . Russia has been a net exporter of wheat since 2002 – so 19 straight years. The commie years were bad, but not recently. They do import about 10% of their meat. Under autarky, wheat feeds cattle and closes that gap. China is fine with trading with them. I don’t think India minds, either.

  9. John Wilder. Your humor is what makes the telling of doom so compelling. I sit here reading about dire consequences for our country and the world, totally agreeing with your assessment. But laughing all the way through it. Face it, you’re the Mary Poppins of the doom/preparedness/SHTF bloggers. Telling it like it is with humor. AKA, a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.
    The memes today were rockin’! So freaking funny!
    But even though I laugh, I am as prepared as I can be, but still ratholing away as much as I can.
    The main thing to remember is you can’t think of everything to store, there will be surprises. So don’t think of your preps as the end all, be all. Think of them as the means to have an easier transition to being more self sufficient and basically a harder life. Adapt and survive.

    1. Thank you – one of the nicest complements! The Mrs. laughed – you’re not wrong.

      Keep stacking the stuff.

      Again, thank you!

    2. Hmmmm Is there anyway ya think we can get these companies to leave the US too?

  10. “I’ll be kind and guess that he has Alzheimer’s rather than being this stupid.”

    Biden certainly has dementia but even when he was “lucid” he was a dolt, a genuinely stupid person. Worse, he is far from alone, most of the people in most of the most important positions in America are idiots as well. Dan Quayle was the butt of many jokes but I met him once and he really was stupid.

    1. An alternative to the diagnosis of ‘half-wit and incompetent’:
      *Manchurian candidate
      .
      Fortunately, as a Manchurian, Glorious Leader chinesium joe biden is as incompetent as ever.
      .
      Fortunately, all the rest of TheRulingElites are inbred and equally stupit and incompetent.
      .
      You know, I might be on the verge of suspecting nobody is flying this thing…

  11. The engineered famine and 7500 degree mushroom clouds, what Schwab wants, Schwab gets.
    The impossibility of everyday living conditions in order to install the global soviet as the taxable unit serfs cry out with their last need of save me.
    The drooling third rate neoconned Strangelove wannabes will not rest until Chiquitastan is a 3000 mile glow in the dark charcoal birdbath.
    A feature and not a bug to the Long Marchers and they don’t give a rat’s ass about you or your existence beyond the taxable unit status.
    How about muh democracy, comrade.

    1. In fact, they want us sick so we have to prop up pharma. Let a thousand flowers bloom, as long as they have prescription drugs!

    2. We contrived that Saddam Hussein be hanged for his WMDs.

      Justice is blind and impartial, right? Is it also consistent?

    1. If he does, it’s weapons-free worldwide, and all Russian assets and populations worldwide the target.
      The genocide would be biblical.
      Whatever survives will crawl out of Russia a few years hence wearing furs, and toting pointy sticks and leather-skin shields.

      1. Not gonna happen. You’ve gone full potato on this one, Aesop. Pull back.
        (Oh, and by the way, Russia has more nukes than we do. And their missiles were modernized and replaced over the last 20 years, so they probably work.)

  14. For some reason people here in America think everybody else in the world are ignorant, my God look at what types are making the decisions up in Washington and every State. A Christian Nation, no I don’t think so.
    Russians are not some kind of brutish people, They have experienced godless communism for about eighty years, and now have some sense of normalcy and actual culture. My personal belief is that the Russian people will not demand anybody’s head on a platter, they just will want to win.
    I wish the people here in the USA had some feeling of what is actually normal, and not some homosexual fueled view that are nothing but lies. But no, full speed ahead into the same old trap that will only bring destruction.
    This will not end well.

    1. On the moral level, the Russian-Ukraine war is Christian nationalism versus the globohomo new world order.
      And the USA is on the wrong side.

  15. Don’t just pine for a Deep State billionaires war, get over there and fight for Ukraine’s border.
    You can do what Hitler and Napoleon couldn’t do, pack your keyboard.
    Ready for total WAR?
    Better pack a fountain of youth and permanent water supply im das Bunker.

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  18. I believe you were starting to make a good point about processed foods but you decided to channel Aesop. That’s was my jumping off point. Bye

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