Why should anyone care?
Demand for dollars affects the purchasing power of dollars. Do you use dollars to buy things?
Russia dealing directly with China without the dollar, now Australia...
This is not good for the US.
“Why should anyone care?”
Probably no one, except the aussie’s. over 90% of their population lives within 100 miles of their east coast. Meaning that China is licking its chops at the prospect of using some of that vacant land - as is India btw. Sooo, if I were the Aussie’s I would be careful about cozying up to close with the Chinese. How does Esops parable about The Farmer and The Snake go? “Well, you knew I was a snake...” Something like that :)
One of the reasons the US has maintained the ascendency in world affairs for so long, is because the dollar has been declared the “reserve currency”, good for settling debts everywhere in the world.
This function was once ascribed to various stores of silver, to some degree, but more specificly, the use of gold. Trouble is, there simply is not enough gold in the world to adequate settle debts, and what gold there is held by national treasuries, is “hypothecated”, essentially it is already mortgaged to another party or country. And apparently, this hypothecation can have many layers, in which obligations, counter-obligations and cross-obligations can all exist simultaneously. Therefore, it is a legal and increasingly, a physical impossibility to deliver the gold bullion from one point to another.
But now, the US has chosen to expand its physical and virtual supply of dollars, cheapening and diluting its value, so it is no longer a trustworthy measure of exchange. What was once a reliable yardstick for exchange, has now become a rubber rod, flexing and stretching in unpredictable manner.
The Chinese have chosen the old method of basing their currency, the yuan, on some measure of how many ounces of gold a given amount of face value will buy, and pegged it accordingly. The Australians have chosen to respect this monetary relationship, and now settles all their debts with China directly without resorting to the intermediary of dollars.
Once China gets a real blue-water navy, expect our international influence to diminish even further.
The quasi-governance of the territory once known as “the United States of America” is not being defeated, as on a field of battle. The Current Regime is pre-emptively surrendering.
The only reason U.S. has gotten away with money printing and rising debt is because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency. When China doesn’t have to hold so many dollars, they won’t have to buy so many U.S. treasuries which we have to sell to cover out of control spending, money printing and debt. Then who will buy? Force U.S. citizens to buy with their retirement accounts if not outright confiscation.