[Samurai]

I am surprised no one here has been talking about this very significant news...

Saudi Arabia Just Ditched The US Dollar - No more petrodollar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yolCkHT1S_o

[V.Narayan]

Saudi Arabia ends 80-year petrodollar deal with US for multi-currency sales

Originally Posted by Samurai

I am surprised no one here has been talking about this very significant news...

Saudi Arabia Just Ditched The US Dollar - No more petrodollar

https://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=yolCkHT1S_o

Thanks Samurai. I just typed in a post on my draft sheet early this morning and came here to see you beat me to it. I was half suspecting you would have caught it already. :-)

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news...7dca3c88&ei=31

All,

This is a landmark moment where the role of the US$ in world trade and as a reserve currency goes.

This agreement, originally signed on June 8, 1974, had been a key part of US global economic influence. This deal is a cornerstone of Nixon-Kissinger’s creation of the all powerful petro-dollar which helps make the $ the de facto reserve currency of the globe.

By choosing not to extend this contract, Saudi Arabia can now sell oil and other goods using different currencies, such as the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan, instead of only US dollars. Eventually IMHO this could help lay the foundation of a global digital currency for trade. This move is expected to accelerate the global trend of using currencies other than the US dollar in international trade.

One unstated reason the US attacked and plundered Iraq in 2003 is because Saddam was trying to sell his country’s oil in Euros to break the strangle hold of the US $. It is a reflection of how much power dynamics have changed since 2003 that now the US can do little but grimance.

If the relative power balance of USA-China shifts due to this which it almost certainly, will it could result in USA getting closer to India and be willing to share strategic technology which they still shy away from most often.

This seemingly innocuous news is in reality a silent shifting of tectonic plates.

The weaponization of the $ in February-March 2022 had led a few of us to comment on the Ukraine thread that this will eventually have ramifications on the role and power of the US$. Step one just happened. The $ isn't about to crumble in the next few years or even become irrelevant in 20 years. But gradually over the next 20 years it could become one of four or five mediums of trade and holding of reserves.

The unbelievable power of the US Govt to print currency at will is the piece that may most likely be affected the most over the coming 5 to 10 years provided...provided.... uncle Xi Jinping does not throw away China's advantages through his policies.

[DigitalOne]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I am surprised no one here has been talking about this very significant news...

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Saudi Arabia ends 80-year petrodollar deal with US for multi-currency sales

https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/news...7dca3c88&ei=31

There is a buzz regarding this mainly in the Indian press, and few Youtubers. Indian press is merely cross-referencing as seen in the link provided above.

Saudi Arabia has decided not to renew its 80-year petrodollar deal with the United States, which expired on Sunday, June 9, as per media reports.

Some of the news reports call it an 80 year old pact between US and Saudi. AI is going to find it a cakewalk to replace this kind of reporters .

The shift away from the petro-dollar is an ongoing process since the last few years as can be seen from these articles (Link 1, Link 2, Link 3), but not a single dramatic event as it is being made out to be.

[ValarMorghulis]

Originally Posted by Samurai

I am surprised no one here has been talking about this very significant news...

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

..provided.... uncle Xi Jinping does not throw away China's advantages through his policies.

Originally Posted by DigitalOne

...but not a single dramatic event as it is being made out to be.

Combine this with the fact that China was dumping US securities at an alarming rate since 2021 and buying gold, and interesting scenarios tend to appear. China bought more gold last year than any other central bank and has it has been on a gold buying spree for 17 straight months.
China's purchases halted only last week when gold touched an all-time high.
Link-1
Link-2

Meanwhile, it dumped $50 billion worth of US securities last quarter and has sold $300 billion worth US securities since 2021 to mid 2023.
Link-3

China still holds ~$800 billion worth US securtities though.
Link-4

What if China is planning an invasion?

[SnS_12]

Reports of the petrodollar system’s demise are ‘fake news’ — here’s why

It seemed like big news, and many wondered why the mainstream media had seemingly ignored it. Turns out, there was a very good reason.

In a blog post published Friday, Paul Donovan, chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, remarked that the fake story had become surprisingly widespread, providing another lesson about the pitfalls of “confirmation bias.”

“Clearly, the story that is going around today is fake news. There was an agreement signed in June of 1974, but it had nothing to do with currencies because the Saudis carried on selling in sterling after that,” Donovan noted in an interview with MarketWatch.

The agreement referred to by Donovan is the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. It was formally established on June 8, 1974, by a joint statement issued and signed by Henry Kissinger, the U.S. secretary of state at the time, and Prince Fahd, the second deputy prime minister (and later king and prime minister) of Saudi Arabia, according to a report found on the Government Accountability Office’s website.

https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/reports-of-the-petrodollar-systems-demise-are-fake-news-heres-why-4e712804

[SmartCat]

There are few things to remember about international currency & trade:

- All countries would like to import goods with their own currency. For eg, India/China/Russia will be glad if all countries starts accepting Rupees/Yuan/Roubles. Because then, each Govt can just 'print' the money they want for importing goods. After all, at the central Govt level, currency is created by magic, out of nothing.

- However, all countries would straight away refuse to accept anything other than USD, EUR, GBP, YEN & Swiss Francs. That's because these currencies are "fully convertible", and Rupees/Yuan/Roubles is not. What this means is that, India can accept payments in Yen from one country and also pay another country in Yen. This country can then convert Yen into USD or their local currency, without having to involve Japan.

- There in lies the biggest hurdle in acceptability of Rupees/Yuan/Roubles etc. It is not a fully convertible currency. What this means is Indian Rupees in Russian central bank is useful only to cover imports from India. Rupees is not acceptable to a third party country like Japan or Brazil, because they will be stuck with a currency that is not useable. They will insist on one of the 5 convertible currencies.

- To give you an analogy, you will accept salary from your company only in Indian Rupees. You will not accept Amazon Gift voucher, simply because it greatly restricts your ability to spend on what you want. Amazon Gift voucher is acceptable only at Amazon.in while INR is acceptable in all shops & establishments in India.

- So unless Rupees/Yuan/Roubles becomes a fully convertible currency, there is no way it will significantly affect the dominance of US dollar or Euros in international trade. The news you hear about Yuan or Rupees or Roubles in international trade is drop in the ocean. Like 0.001% of overall volumes.

- China/Russia/India will not make their currency fully convertible, because it would involve removal of all capital controls.

- Even if China/Russia/India makes their currency fully convertible, it does not mean countries will ditch USD. Countries prefer their currency reserves to be either stable or appreciate in value. But a currency like INR or Roubles trends downwards against USD, and countries might not prefer to hold Yuan because of unpredictability of China in geopolitcal arena.

So whenever you read articles about reduced influence of dollars in the future, just add some salt to taste.

[SithDefender]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Saudi Arabia Just Ditched The US Dollar - No more petrodollar

Thx Samurai for sharing this! I had read up some articles but nothing explained as clearly as this video.

Originally Posted by SmartCat

There are few things to remember about international currency & trade:

Thx for summarizing this so well !

[dragracer567]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

- There in lies the biggest hurdle in acceptability of Rupees/Yuan/Roubles etc. It is not a fully convertible currency. What this means is Indian Rupees in Russian central bank is useful only to cover imports from India. Rupees is not acceptable to a third party country like Japan or Brazil, because they will be stuck with a currency that is not useable. They will insist on one of the 5 convertible currencies.

- So unless Rupees/Yuan/Roubles becomes a fully convertible currency, there is no way it will significantly affect the dominance of US dollar or Euros in international trade. The news you hear about Yuan or Rupees or Roubles in international trade is drop in the ocean. Like 0.001% of overall volumes.

I have a question. By convertibility, do you mean acceptability or having a floating exchange rate?

Because, correct me if I'm wrong, both the Indian Rupees and Rubles are technically floating currencies with highly fluctuating exchange rates, unlike the Yuan. Offcourse, the RBI frequently intervenes to stabilise the currency, but don't all central banks do that (again, please correct me if I'm wrong)?

In terms of acceptability, offcourse, the INR isn't attractive given the dismal position of Indian exports while the Yuan & Rubles are controlled by authoritarian regimes who would weaponise their currency even faster than the West. You're right in that there aren't many options left apart from the basket of Western currencies - USD, EUR, GBP, YEN & Swiss Francs.

Another aspect when we talk about the decline of the West, especially the US is that the alternatives - Russia, China, Saudi, Turkey etc. are either doing economically worse or are declining even faster than the West. The Saudi economy which was hailed in the past 2 years (which was just a blip due to high oil prices from the Ukraine war) is currently struggling with multiple budget cuts. India is the weird exception to this, for now, but a long way to go given the per capita situation.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by dragracer567

I have a question. By convertibility, do you mean acceptability or having a floating exchange rate?

Yes, Rupees/Roubles/Yuan all have floating exchange rates, and its price changes every second like a stock, with respect to US Dollar. They are called as 'currency pairs'. Global forex markets are open 24/5, and its participants are banks, financial institutions, large traders, hedge funds etc.

'Acceptability' is not truly a term used in currency markets. But the reason why INR/Yuan/Roubles is not accepted for international trade is because it is a 'partially convertible' and not a 'fully convertible' currency.

India/Russia/China have a whole lot of restrictions on foreign exchange transactions. Just like how you are restricted by RBI from certain forex transactions & limits are placed, there are restrictions for foreign banks/financial institutions/currency traders too. Such restrictions can be called 'capital controls'.

Because of these capital controls, global forex markets will have poor liquidity for conversion from Rupees/Yuan/Roubles to USD. Hypothetically, if Brazil accepts Rs. 8,355 cr from India, they can convert it into $1 billion, by tapping into the global forex market. But since there is low liquidty (aka wide spreads) for USDINR pair & because of transaction charges, they might get just $998 million.

So for Brazil, it makes sense to demand payment in USD and not INR.

[autobahnjpr]

Originally Posted by SmartCat

There are few things to remember about international currency & trade:
- Even if China/Russia/India makes their currency fully convertible, it does not mean countries will ditch USD. Countries prefer their currency reserves to be either stable or appreciate in value.

So whenever you read articles about reduced influence of dollars in the future, just add some salt to taste.

What makes others not ditch USD? What will make them start ditching it? Pound was probably where the USD is before world war I and the might or acceptance of USD may go down. It is not a law of nature which cannot be changed.
It is just a combination of events and occurrences which might decide the future course of action. So, we can keep an open mind and say may be it can happen.

[SmartCat]

Originally Posted by autobahnjpr

Pound was probably where the USD is before world war I and the might or acceptance of USD may go down.

Gold was the USD before WW2, not Pound. All currencies were backed by gold kept in the vaults. You can read about history of money/currency here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_standard

Bank notes used to say "promise to pay the bearer $XX worth of Gold"

What makes others not ditch USD? What will make them start ditching it? It is not a law of nature which cannot be changed.
It is just a combination of events and occurrences which might decide the future course of action. So, we can keep an open mind and say may be it can happen.

Apparently, it will be crypotcurrencies next

Just like how EURO is now a reserve currency for many central banks, Yuan & Rupee have a good probability of being added to the list, slowly over time. The pace will accelerate only after full convertibility though.

But just don't expect countries to "ditch" USD. From other countries' point of view, a known devil is better than an unknown angel.

[v1p3r]

I haven't visited this thread for some time. More's the pity, since this is the pick of the forum.

Originally Posted by Samurai

For someone from patriarchal society, it may appear like a simple truth. But you need to consider what usually happened when power is on the other side.
I belong to a matrilineal community, where women inherited all the property, and men got nothing.
The matrilineality is quite common in Kerala too, but I am not sure how they practice it now.

Are you substituting matrilinearity for matriarchy? I am not sure about Bunts, but Malayali Nairs are matrilineal and patriarchal. The property and family name come from the mother, and it's the mother's brothers' (previous generation), or sisters' children (of the present generation) who inherit the name and property. However, the decision-making authority is still the oldest male of that family, called the karanavar in Malayalam.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Women in such communities never let men decide their fate. Husbands and sons don't get to decide unilaterally on any important decision unless the wife or mom allows.

Is this not ideal?

Originally Posted by Samurai

Let me quote a professional from Psychology Today:

If society ensures that the 'safest' jobs go to women and the 'dangerous' ones go to men, then obviously more men will die per capita. There are some jobs which are purely physical - top flight sports, maybe fighter pilots - where scientifically proven male reaction (+ force) times make born males better. This was famously proven when the Williams sisters lost in quick succession to a mid-ranked (200+) male player. In every other role that I can think of, there is no appreciable physical difference between men and women at a large scale.

Originally Posted by Samurai

When I was in engineering college in the 80s, one could see highly skewed gender ratio across branches. While computer science and electronics branches had equal or more girls than boys, the mechanical and civil branches had 95:5 or even higher skew favoring boys. Why did this happen?

This happened because the parents didn't want their daughters 'working in factories' or 'construction sites' and CS/EE seems like a good choice to get into an AC office instead. I studied in CS (50+% girls) and half the girls in my class wanted to study something else but their parents 'forced' them into CS (or EE, or BT). That's also why you will see more equitable representation in medicine, and skew towards women in law. These are 'suitable' and 'respectable' careers for women in Indian society today. In fact, for many years ISM (now IIT) Dhanbad would simply not admit women for their degree in mining. Sudha Kulkarni famously had to fight to work on the shop floor.

A curious outcome of this - 90% of the teaching staff in CS is (in the 2000s) made up of women. This is because you had to be REALLY bad at computers to become a lecturer, when Infosys would hire trespassers. So all the men would be hired by IT cos, but women who were not allowed to work 'long hours' by their husbands / parents, could at least become lecturers since it was 9 am to 3 pm. And they were quite good, unlike the odd man who was a CS lecturer and could neither string a line together in English or C++.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Why did women's share in labour participation dramatically start rising in 20th century and continues increase even now? Because most jobs created in 20th century and later were indoor jobs, which made biological differences lot less relevant while doing those jobs.

No, it's because women fought for these rights. When my mother began working at an oil company, amongst other places on oil rigs (a so called dangerous workplace!), there were no basic facilities for women such as toilets. BMTC women drivers and conductors still complain that they can't use the restroom, the most basic of human functions, because there aren't any for women. I don't know about any of you, but I would certainly not be able to go to a workplace where I couldn't even go to the restroom every few hours.

Surprisingly enough, the oil company's heads (from the same batch) are all men. Because you had to go through the rotation that included rigs, which of course had no loos for women. So the women quit and went elsewhere to become CEOs. But of course, survivorship bias would have us all believe that women aren't strong enough to work in oil companies.

Originally Posted by Samurai

I have male surgeon friends who casually mention they did 6-8 surgeries that day, there is no emotional attachment.

For this to be a valid comparison, you have to tell us what your female surgeon friends say as well.

Originally Posted by Samurai

Let's look at the 3 industries with high skew, marked in red. It that patriarchy at work?

I'm not sure where this data is from - because in India the govt claims that nearly half of all construction workers are women (though I haven't read the report). Other sources mention anywhere from 12 to 25%. All sources agree that women get paid 30-40% less than men for the same work. If that's not patriarchy, I don't know what is.

Curiously, 70-80% of garment and textile workers are women. This is most definitely a manufacturing industry. And the Indian government also claims that 63% of agricultural workers are female. From my little knowledge of things, agriculture is pretty hard work physically.

99% of this is social conditioning stretching back generations, if not millenia. There are very few jobs in regular employment (if any at all) that require enough physical strength for men to be at an advantage - maybe some porters at railway stations, and other such loading jobs. The real matter here is that people are loathe to 'let their daughters go out', whether it is late at night, or to another city / country to get a job / degree they want to. Until we solve for this, there will be no gender equality.

My litmus test would be:
1. Can a woman walk around as safely as a man at any time, in any place, doing the same things a man would do?
2. Do the man and woman have equal responsibilities at work and home - barring the obvious physical ones like breastfeeding and pregnancy?

Any country or society that can answer both of the above in the affirmative has achieved gender parity. I don't think it will happen in my lifetime.

note: I'm not personally picking on Samurai (though it may really seem that way lol). Apologies in advance!

[Samurai]

Originally Posted by v1p3r

Are you substituting matrilinearity for matriarchy?

Did I?

Originally Posted by v1p3r

I am not sure about Bunts, but Malayali Nairs are matrilineal and patriarchal. The property and family name come from the mother, and it's the mother's brothers' (previous generation), or sisters' children (of the present generation) who inherit the name and property.

Not the case with Bunts. Here the property went to the daughters, not to their brothers or husbands. I gave the examples too, 97.2% of my great-grandmother's property went to her 3 daughters, and son got the rest. So, most property stays with women, not men. I inherited zero/zilch from my dad's family, everything went to his sister's daughters. Only in 21st century, the modern laws of equal rights are slowly getting applied.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

However, the decision-making authority is still the oldest male of that family, called the karanavar in Malayalam.

Among us, even though eldest man will be called head of the family for all the operational matters (duties outside the house), they don't get to have final say on anything. My dad was the head of his family, but all the power/property stayed with his nieces.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

Is this not ideal?

Rarely. I don't think I need to explain you the problems with rule by committee, and possibility of bitter disagreements. Prior to British, all disagreements were resolved by local arbitrators (village elders) whose quick decisions were socially binding. Once British established their courts, disagreements turned into decades long litigations and ruined lot of families. Even primogeniture started sounding sensible.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

This happened because the parents didn't want their daughters 'working in factories' or 'construction sites' and CS/EE seems like a good choice to get into an AC office instead.

For what reason? Because most societies traditionally protected their women from unsafe conditions. If men die before marriage, it won't effect the birthrate/population of a society. If women die before giving birth, the impact is too much. Mao's China didn't understand this, and their one child policy led to massive female infanticide. Now their birth rate is lower than death rate.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

For this to be a valid comparison, you have to tell us what your female surgeon friends say as well.

That data was already provided by am1m:

Originally Posted by am1m

Because of a surgeon in the family, I've interacted with a lot of surgeons, both male and female. It is true that the gender ratio is still skewed, but I really don't see the female surgeons get extra attached either. They are as matter-of-fact and clinical as their male counterparts.

In other words, that job doesn't need emotional attachment.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

I'm not sure where this data is from - because in India

Sorry, I have clearly specified the source. And it is from Iceland, the most gender-neutral country in the world. Stats from that country prove that women don't start behaving like men if you make all things equal.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

My litmus test would be:... doing the same things a man would do?

Is that what women want in general? Doing the same things men do? The stats from gender-neutral Iceland clearly show that is not the case. Social conditioning is not inherited. If you raise an Indian infant in a European household, it is not going to grow up behaving like an Indian.

Originally Posted by v1p3r

barring the obvious physical ones like breastfeeding and pregnancy

That's the only difference? What about monthly periods and the hormonal impact? Women are not just men with different plumbing. That kind of thinking leads to assumptions like trans-women are women, etc.

[Samurai]

A very interesting, but long video on how India is fighting China on the economic front.

That too from a Canadian...

https://youtu.be/RBCqHlLePQk

[DigitalOne]

As Mohammed Yunus, the pioneer of Microfinance takes over as the Interim head of government in Bangladesh, it would be a good time to look at what happened eventually to Microfinance.

Source: TOI, Bengaluru print edition, 17th Aug 2024.



TLDR: The promise of microfinance has not been fulfilled.