The corona virus outbreak shows just how fragile our world is

Quite apart from the disruption that has been caused, China has printed $170BILLION of extra cash to pump into the economy. There’s no guarantee that’s enough, and in fact it’s unlikely to be. In 2008, the US Treasury printed $600 billion, and that wasn’t enough to prevent widespread bankruptcies and zombie companies. The IMF only has about $3-4 triilion available to it and the dollar derivatives and swaps are now around $18 trillion, so a real disruption (people asking for their USD back) would have a catastrophic effect on the world economy. Far from reducing reliance on dollars, the crash enhanced and strengthened its hegemony.

So – at the risk of stating the obvious – there needs to be something else that can be used if dollars start to become unavailable. I’m not for a moment suggesting that cryptos – with a current value UNDER $300 MILLION – will replace it, but if your bank started not honouring your bank card, you just might like to have some cryptos available to buy that pint of milk.

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