Alan Greenspan, who died on Monday, is being remembered largely for his time as chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 through 2006. In that position, Greenspan played a critical role in advancing the American state.
Tag: gold standard
There has been increasing talk about the potential restoration of a gold standard arising from people and governments across the world seeking to protect themselves from the weaponization of the United States dollar’s world reserve currency status. How long can dollar hegemony last when the government behind the dollars is sanctioning people and governments around the world with abandon? There must be a way out of this mess, and the many centuries long history of using gold as money points to one tried-and-true path.
Interviewed Tuesday at Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan indicated that Saudi Arabia would be open to conducting trade, including involving oil, in various currencies — mentioning in particular the euro and the Saudi riyal — instead of the United States dollar. This is the latest in a series of developments suggesting the Middle East nation and large oil producer is shifting away from supporting US dollar hegemony through trade.
In February of 2006, then US House of Representatives member Ron Paul (R-TX) discussed the history of US dollar hegemony and its looming doom in a House floor speech titled “The End of Dollar Hegemony.” Paul began his speech with his assessment that the dollar dominance, called dollar hegemony more recently and dollar diplomacy in earlier decades of the prior hundred years, “is coming to an end.”
The full history and analysis Paul related in the speech is fascinating. But, there is a particular portion of Paul’s speech that relates to the Saudi finance minister’s comment. This is when Paul focused on the key role the trade of oil has played in supporting dollar hegemony and the related position of the US dollar as the world reserve currency.