A Coming Collapse of the Dollar?
It is a lengthy piece but worth the read. The essay has been excerpted from the German best-seller "World War for Wealth: The Global Grab for Power and Prosperity" by SPIEGEL editor Gabor Steingart.
Steingart says the decline of the dollar as the world's reserve currency is inevitable. The only factor holding it up is a strange combination of confidence and fear. Confidence in the American economy and a return on investment and fear that if that confidence evaporated everyone would be wiped out. Here is one quote:
What remains unclear is just how dramatic the crash will be. Experts have often forecast the effects of a dollar meltdown. If the downward trend were to begin, interest on credit would rise step by step in an attempt to curb devaluation. That way, the dollar crisis would spread from the world of currencies to the real world of factories, businesses and household accounts within days.
Major and minor private investments yield lower returns when interest rates climb. People would start to save, the economy would falter and eventually shrink. The first mass layoffs would arrive soon afterwards. US citizens would have to once more drastically reduce their level of consumption, as unemployment and waves of bankruptcy would shake up the country. Millions of households would become unable to pay back their bank loans. Then real estate prices and share values would begin to drop, having been overpriced for years and used as mortgages for consumer credit. When the real estate bubble bursts, consumption inevitably dwindles even further. The hunger for imports would fade, causing problems for exporting countries as well. It would only be a matter of days before newspapers would once more feature a term that seemed to have disappeared decades ago: world economic crisis.
Steingart asks, "Who or what is preventing investors from behaving differently towards the dollar..." It is our position that it is God who is preventing foreign money managers from dumping the dollar for another currency. As this article points out the American dream has been financed by deficit spending, import/export imbalances and foreign debt far beyond the normal parameters of economic science. There is a "strong hand" from beyond holding the American economy together. When the tide shifts we will all be impacted.
When that happens is up to God. Until then don't bet against America. I have written about this in more detail here. You can read the entire Speigel article here.
