Thursday, November 19, 2015

How will de-dollarization affect the United Kingdom? Does the U.K. believe de-dollarization will stabilize its economy? What is the United Kingdom's position on the Bancor (the proposed international reserve currency)? How would this impact your domestic and foreign transaction?

It is extremely difficult to predict the long-term effects of the marginalization of the U.S. dollar in world trading, especially with regard to Great Britain. The dollar, and its post-1973 manifestation, the petrodollar, has been an internationally recognized reserve currency since the establishment of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system (named for the 1944 gathering of leaders from 44 nations in an area of New Hampshire called Bretton Woods, where the outlines of the eventual postwar international economic structure were determined). With the rise of other major economic powers since then, however, including Germany and Japan and, more recently, Russia and China, frustrations with an economic system predicated upon the value of American currency has grown considerably. While steps in the past by some nations to move away from the "dollar-centric" global economic order have largely floundered, the rise of China as the second largest economy in the world has represented the single greatest threat to the dollar’s dominance since Bretton Woods.
Great Britain has not been insulated from the international reverberations brought about by China’s rise, and its 2014 bilateral agreement with China to trade in those two nations’ respective currencies rather than in U.S. dollars represented a major setback for America. It also, however, represented an intriguing development for Great Britain. China’s emergence as a major global economic player with whom all other major economic players trade has thoroughly transformed the playing field. While petrodollars—the expectation that the enormously important trade in petroleum will be carried out through continued use of the dollar—remains constant (courtesy of Venezuela’s implosion), China’s establishment of an Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank to compete with the American-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (again, remnants of Bretton Woods) has enabled other countries, including Great Britain, to avoid the often painfully stringent requirements the latter institutions impose upon borrowing governments. China is more interested in geopolitical influence than in the fiscal discipline of other countries, so its newly-established international lending institution represents a major shift in global economic dominance.
So, how does all of this affect Great Britain? After all, much of the above deals more with the United States and China than with Great Britain. Especially with its economic future seriously clouded by the decision to withdraw from the European Union (although, the British had never adopted the standardized European Union currency, the euro), the British may very well benefit from the diversification that de-dollarization represents. Trading in other currencies, or even in a Bancor-type reserve currency to supplant the dollar (a measure that dates to the early 1940s and John Maynard Keynes’ vision of a universal currency not identified with any one nation’s central bank or gold supply), would liberate the British from the constraints of the American-dominated institutions established under unique circumstances. Replacing the dollar with a “Bancor” would, to the British, simply substitute one dominant currency, the dollar, with another, the Bancor. Britain has already demonstrated, to the chagrin of the rest of the European Union, its antipathy for common currencies that could marginalize its own sovereign currency. As Britain’s agreement with China demonstrated, the British may be more comfortable with greater diversification, assuming the value of that country’s Sterling reserves are insulated from the kinds of shocks that could lead to a run on Britain’s currency.
Many in Great Britain believe that de-dollarization will help stabilize its economy while saving the pound as a viable currency of international trade—a British goal to which the Chinese purport to be sympathetic. Those beliefs, however, are currently sublimated to uncertainties surrounding “Brexit,” the name bestowed upon the movement to quit the European Union.
Britain’s future views on “Bancor” or any other manifestation of a global reserve currency must be viewed in the context of its rejection of the euro, its agreement with China pertaining to bilateral trade in their respective currencies, its withdrawal from the European Union, and the massive scale of American budget deficits. All in all, the British believe that preserving a sovereign currency both protects its standing as a major world power and provides it far greater latitude in carrying out international financial agreements in trading with select foreign governments, especially with China.
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/tag/de-dollarization

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/100314/why-doesnt-england-use-euro.asp

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