Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
An opinion column by Tyler Cowen of Bloomberg News today offered an awfully contrived rationale for U.S. dollar imperialism and exploitation throughout the world. But Cowen's acknowledging that imperialism and exploitation was service enough.
In his column, "What De-Dollarization? The Dollar Rules the World" --
-- appended here, Cowen argues that it's actually good that Americans, inhabitants of supposedly the richest country, live at the expense of poorer countries.
He writes: "Think of 'a sound and focal dollar' as a good or service that the U.S. produces, just as China manufactures phones or Japan makes cars. When Americans trade dollars for foreign goods and services, that measures as a U.S. trade deficit, but it can also be seen as America exporting dollars and 'dollar services.' The U.S. brands and markets its dollar, just as Zara or the Gap brands and markets clothing.
"So the much-vaunted U.S. trade deficit can be reconceptualized as a form of barter: One service (dollar stability) is being exchanged for another good or service (e.g., whatever America buys from China). In essence, branding and selling dollars so effectively -- also known as 'buying things' -- enables U.S. consumers to have a higher standard of living."
Forget for a moment that the dollar's "stability" has been a joke since dollar convertibility into gold was ended in 1971 and especially in the last several years, during which the primary export of the United States has been the inflation that is devastating the world.
Instead, consider whether the world could not devise an impartial currency that did not confer on a single country such an "exorbitant privilege," to use the long-ago term of a French finance minister -- the privilege to exploit the world economically to any extent.
Of course the world once had such an impartial currency -- gold.
Yes, to some extent the rest of the world may be getting what it deserves for its complicity with the longstanding U.S. policy of pushing gold outside the world financial system. But at least much of the rest of the world seems to be wising up to its enslavement and reawakening to the old virtues of the monetary metal.
Cowen may be right that the resentment felt by the rest of the world, no matter how justified, will never manage to overthrow the dollar. Even so, he inadvertently has acknowledged the justice of such a change.
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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