china – Page 3 – Learning, Science and Society

It is June 2025, and the world has learned that it no longer has a reserve currency, a role hitherto held by the US Dollar. The chain of events which began with the election of Donald Trump by a disputed majority in the Electoral College (readers will recall he lost the popular vote) have now reached their logical conclusion. You will also remember how attempts to enforce the result by the US Supreme Court could not be accepted by some States who alleged, with some justification, that the Court was no longer an objective and unbiased institution, Their de facto secession, pending a recount, undermined the integrity of both the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, attempts by the Provisional Trump Administration to impose import tariffs (20% on all comers, 60% on China) have only led to a retaliatory fire sale of Treasury Bonds and other US assets, which led to this morning’s news of the suspension of dollar convertibility. The United States of America (or rather the three new nations into which it seems to be splitting) is no longer at the centre of the world’s financial system.

But, as of this summer of 2025, do we still have a world financial system? Attempts by the BRICS nations to set up their own reserve must end in failure. The lack of transparency in their systems(one or two are more or less open kleptocracies) mean that no one dare trust them to hold their money . The Euro area is too small and fragmented to possibly bear such a role, and their can be other candidates. How can world trade now be anything more than a slightly sophisticated form of barter?

Yet there is one measure by which value is judged. And always has been. Gold has been prized as the ultimate yardstick of worth by humans, and has been by for millennia. It is transportable, it is tradeable, and its price is known at once by everyone in the market. History suggests that world trade works best when most reserves are held by a single, hegemonic power(think Britain before 1914 or the US before 1971) But even if the world’s gold is diffused across the vaults of many competing nations and empires, it can still provide a standard against which everyone can measure the value of their trades. Expect its price to rise now for the rest of 2025, and perhaps even more next year.

#US dollar #world trade #BRICS #reserve currency #gold

In the spring of 1789, Europe was at peace. It looked as if it would be a long one. The American-French victory in the Independence war had restored a rough equality of force between Britain and France, the two world powers, so that neither had obvious motives to attack. Further east, Austria, Russia and Prussia had achieved a rough status quo, or at least, had sufficiently fought each other out. To be frank, China, the Mughals and the Ottomans were ceasing to count. Just as in 1990, the world thought it could look forward to decades of relative peace, trade and prosperity.

Instead, events in France lead to the unfolding of a cataclysmic series of events. Each of them so large that on their own they would have been world-shattering. But in the twenty six years-a generation- from 14th July 1789 to 18th June 1815, they were so many and rapid that they left a world transformed and unrecognizable. Think Revolution, regicides, wars, terror, directory, Napoleon, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Tilsit, Spain, Russia, Battle of the Nations, Elba, Waterloo all tripping in, one after the other in bewildering succession. *(If not, read Robert Harvey The War of Wars-it’s serious history which, amazingly, feels like a page-turning thriller {1])

We know believe that the events that began on 24th February 2024 with the Russian invasion of Ukraine have unleashed a chain of events which will take years and decades to play out. The two opposed coalitions are too big to easily fail. The issues at stake are too profound to escape the debate of war. As a blog which is read all around the world, you might not want to us to take sides. Yet we have to be honest about where we stand. On the one hand the US, EU and their allies have many grievous faults. The other side-Russia, Iran, China and others, may indeed claim- we stress claim-to represent the relatively disadvantaged. However, we know one thing. We are free to write these words in our country, as we would be equally free to criticise our Government, or our allies. All know that we would not be if we were sitting in one of those countries opposed to us. Our Georgian ancestors, who gave up their comfortable lives to confront a similar peril knew that was the single, irredeemable difference between them and their foes. That is what makes our cause just. And one day, we will prevail.

[1]https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Wars-Struggle-1789-1815-1793-1815/dp/1845296354

#ukraine #russia #china #usa #EU #canada #uk #australia #iran #peace #war #freedom of speech

Tag: china

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