Comment by maxglute
2 months ago
Dollar dominance erosion shifting towards dollar inertia. Post RU sanctions dollar lost much of it's leverage (as geopolitical weapon), i.e. actual useful dominance function (transaction panopticon, sanctions)while still retaining most of the liability (Triffin etc). Dollar going to remain popular by volume because plumbing in place, but parallel payment systems last few years = systematic blindspots where US treasury can't monitor what others buy outside of dollar system, and generally weaker ability coerce countries. What's left of dollar system is US enjoying exorbitant privilege of going into ~35T and rapidly increasing debt to serve as asset for everyone else, while dragging down export via uncompetitive FX.
One interesting attack vector vs USD is PRC recycling it's dollar surplus / shadow lending it's USD reserves at more favorable rates than US gov can, i.e. countries (emerging markets / BRI recipients) who would have borrowed USD from FED (or US influenced IMF/WB) now borrow from USD from PRC -> reduce US treasuries demand and drive up US interest -> further increase US debt. PRC basically hijacked and weaponize USD liquidity to make increasingly ineffective dollar system (as geopolitical tool) even more expensive to maintain while PRC can enjoy dollar liquidity without the maintenance costs. And that's probably the ultimately the goal, smart play is not to inherit reserve obligations, but to turn reserve holder's exorbitant privilege to exorbitant curse.
> countries (emerging markets / BRI recipients) who would have borrowed USD from FED (or US influenced IMF/WB) now borrow from USD from PRC -> reduce US treasuries demand
This makes no sense. If the PRC is lending U.S. dollars, that doesn’t reduce Treasury demand. It increases demand for dollar-denominated assets, goods and service providers. The borrowing country has to spend those lent dollars after all.
PRC lending their USD surplus to countries to buy more PRC shit. "Increases demand for dollar-denominated assets, goods and service" =/= increase demand for US treasury, aka it doesn't fund US deficits. The attack is not on dollar circulation / liquidity but cost of treasury
Old: PRC recycle surplus USD into US bonds, increase US treasury demand, subsidizes cheap US debt.
New: PRC recycle surplus USD into BRI finance, said USD doesn't return to US treasury to buy bonds, decrease US treasury demand, treasury increase interest to fill hole, makes exorbitant privilege more exorbitant.
PRC parallel dollar bond lending COMPETES with US treasury bond lending. PRC dollars gets recycled towards PRC goods / BRI projects, not US treasury. PRC leveraging dollar liquidity for PRC geopolitical interests, meanwhile taking demand away from treasury bond sales, so US drive rates up to compete. US treasury had to find other buyers to fill ~600 billions (and raising) of USD bonds that PRC no longer holds. Filling hole that size = finding more price sensitive buyers (vs PRC who previously default recycled into treasury), so raise interest, increase debt servicing. US 10 year going from 0% (countries basically paying to hold USD) to ~0.8% cost US ~300B+ annually. Now that's not all PRC doing, but 100 billion here and there and soon we are talking about real money.
> attack is not on dollar circulation / liquidity but cost of treasury
No real way this can work between similarly-sized trading economies. Worst case, a couple central bankers' weekends would be ruined.
> PRC recycle surplus USD into BRI finance, said USD doesn't return to US treasury to buy bonds
How? PRC sends dollars into BRICS. What do they do with the dollars? If they aren't sitting on them, they're contributing to the dollar economy.
The PRC financing using dollars would be nuts because it puts their sovereign financing into American hands.
> PRC parallel dollar bond lending COMPETES with US treasury bond lending
Not in any meaningful way. (There aren't that many indisctiminate buyers of international debt anymore. Put another way, most Treasury buyers have and will never buy any Chinese paper and vice versa.)
> US treasury had to find other buyers to fill ~600 billions (and raising) of USD bonds that PRC no longer holds. Filling hole that size = finding more price sensitive buyers
Not really. You fire up the Fed. If it's China that's doing it, that's national security. Hell, sanction the accounts the dollars are going into.
> but 100 billion here and there and soon we are talking about real money
Have you traded Treasuries in an instituional setting? You're talking about the size of a single desk's intraday exposure.
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Could you explain what do BRICS do with dollars they borrowed from PRC? Buy oil and so the dollars flow to SA. Then what do BRICS do when the dollars loan to PRC is due?
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