THE LOOMING EMERGENCE OF REGIONAL RESERVE CURRENCIES

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    by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star:

    For some time, I’ve been predicting the emergence of a “multi-reserve currency” world, a bit of a paradigm shift that the world has not really ever experienced as a permanent feature of its financial system for a very long time, centuries probably.  To be sure, there were periods of exception to this coming paradigm shift, as when during a brief period between the World Wars both the British pound sterling and the US dollar both served as reserve currencies. But the period was more of an interlude period of the transition from the British pound  to the American dollar. What I’m talking about is a world were multiple reserve currencies coexist as a relatively stable feature of the financial system for a prolonged period of time.

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    I have had several reasons for advancing such a notion, but there are two in particular that I have repeatedly argued in various forums, most particularly with Catherine Austin Fitts’ quarterly Solari wrap-ups. The first of these reasons is the emergence of bilateral currency and trading deals that began to emerge in the Shanghai Accord, or so-called BRICS, nations.  These deals it should be noted were not designed to replace the US dollars reserve currency status as much as simply to bypass its use as such. Over time, with enough such agreements, a critical mass could be reached when other currencies, not strong enough to be a global reserve currency on their own, could become strong enough to be used as reserve currencies for regional trading blocs, such as precisely the BRICS nations. Such arrangements would give the nations so agreeing a means and method to resist the bullying from Swampington DC, provided that independent means of clearing could also be established in addition to Swampington’s SWIFT system.  Over the years, we’ve watched as Russia quietly built out such a system – let it be remembered that it did so with quiet Japanese help – and China of course has also been engaged in the process. As we’ll discover in a moment, a critical inflection point appears to have been reached, and now the subject of regional reserve currencies is being openly broached, which strongly suggests and implies that “units-of-account” are already in use in international financial clearing apart from the US dollar.

    My second reason for arguing that we will witness the emergence of regional reserve currencies, and hence of a “multi-polar reserve currency world,” is that this would be a much easier transition stage for Mr. Globalooney to manage than a direct leap to a global currency system via central bank digital currencies or some other mechanism.

    With that in mind, note the following story spotted and shared by M.W.:

    Brazil and Argentina to start preparations for a common currency

    Note what the article says:

    Brazil and Argentina will this week announce that they are starting preparatory work on a common currency, in a move which could eventually create the world’s second-largest currency bloc.
    South America’s two biggest economies will discuss the plan at a summit in Buenos Aires this week and will invite other Latin American nations to join.
    The initial focus will be on how a new currency, which Brazil suggests calling the “sur” (south), could boost regional trade and reduce reliance on the US dollar, officials told the Financial Times. It would at first run in parallel with the Brazilian real and Argentine peso.
    Granted, such a “currency union” is note exactly the same thing as the creation of a regional reserve, but as the article also makes very clear, such a status would almost inevitably accrue to it. And an Argentinian-Brazilian regional currency union has two other factors that would argue for its inevitable success: firstly, the cultures of the two countries are similar, as are the cultures of all Latin American countries. They are, in short, culturally much more cohesive than, say, the European union, with its mix of Latinate, Slavic, and Germanic cultures. Whether this cultural similarity would be enough to surmount the traditional instability of South American governments and their financial policies remains to be seen, but my point is, the creation of such a union between Argentina and Brazil would create a kind of financial gravity in South America that would quickly reach out to engulf the other large economies there, Chile, Columbia, and Venezuela.
    As the article points out, the idea has already spread to other lesser-known currency unions:
    A currency union that covered all of Latin America would represent about 5 per cent of global GDP, the FT estimates. The world’s largest currency union, the euro, encompasses about 14 per cent of global GDP when measured in dollar terms.
    Other currency blocs include the CFA franc which is used by some African countries and pegged to the euro, and the East Caribbean dollar. However these encompass a much smaller slice of global economic output.
    But there’s a fly in the ointment, and this fly is significant enough that it may end the whole experiment, and again, it has to do with culture. To paraphrase Leonard Wibberly’s Mouse that Roared, culture is mightier than money and finance, though money and finance speak louder and stronger at any given moment. (The original quotation was The pen is mightier than the sword, though the sword speaks louder and stronger at any given moment.)  There’s a hint in this article that the tug of war unfolding in Brazil over its last federal election results is a direct consequence of the Brazilian left’s “internationalism”:
    An official announcement is expected during Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s visit to Argentina that starts on Sunday night, the veteran leftist’s first foreign trip since taking power on January 1.
    Brazil and Argentina have discussed a common currency in the past few years but talks foundered on the opposition of Brazil’s central bank to the idea, one official close to the discussions said. Now that the two countries are both governed by leftwing leaders, there is greater political backing.
    And as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world with these grand technocratic schemes, culture can never be reduced to mere technocratic processes, and people want, and will defend, their traditional culture.  It remains to be seen if Mr. Globalooney will heed the lesson, and drastically change his ‘thinking”, or whether he will continue to drone on like Baron von Bomburst, Ketchup Kerry, and Al “Igor” Gore at Davos, oblivious to the people.

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