In researching the effect of the oil being traded not in dollars... came across this and it’s a little more scary.
Heck, this is just a few weeks ago and a REAL person in Asia.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article13455.html
Our way of life, often based on consuming far beyond our means, is being flat-out rejected.
I can’t even exchange a $100 bill on the street here anymore: Most of the street money changers will take euros, Singapore dollars, even Chinese yuan. But fearful of losing their shirt with sinking exchange rates, they don’t want U.S. dollars.
Not long ago, I never traveled without my American Express card. Now, it sits in my office safe. Many in Asia no longer accept the card anymore. MasterCard and Visa are still OK, but they’re also losing market share to locally grown cards like Aeon.
The running joke in Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur is that the U.S. is the place where even your pet could get a credit card or a home mortgage.
So to Asians, the crisis we’re going through is our own fault. And although it was also caused by blunders in Western Europe and other regions, truth be told, they are mostly right.
Thanks for the link showing that the dollar has fallen over 15% in the last 6 months (good article).
There is no rational way out of this mess. Even if there were a rational way out, then we would need to replace about 2000 key leaders in Washington in order to execute on the plan at the proficiency required.
It is more probable that there will be a chaotic unwiding ... like when you break a large spring under excessive tension. That type of chaos is best predicted by history ... and those comparables are not pleasant.
Just a short time ago we laughed at the bread lines and martial law in Russia ...