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Contarini's avatar

"There is a relish in the discomfiture of the West. The euro-dollar lock feels like the final frontier of Western power, long overdue for overthrow." This is a good insight. The current world is delimited by what the Euro/US alliance, i.e. the "West" will permit. Governments and populations outside the west, and populist movements within the West, all see the current governance as insider-driven, self-interested, and operated at their expense. Only if it is broken and superseded do new alternatives become possible. Of course, any transition will have a chaotic element. And this may be the best of all possible worlds. But when some network of people and their institutions are in charge for a long time, others will chafe, and imagine they can do better. Thus, perversely, disasters like full scale war in Europe, and the potential for famine and other hardships, also contain a glimmer, perhaps illusory, of a hope that the old order will be cast off. The future becomes blank, open, with the possibility of novelty. This prospect leads those of a creative turn of mind to speculate, even to do so in a "reverie". Interesting times when financial economists turn into dreamers of speculative fiction! And what does it say about the iron cage of our current order that people welcome catastrophe because it raises the hope of something new?

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Stephen Moore's avatar

We owe a big vote of thanks to Adam and his unusual talent for synthesis and distillation of so many threads and arguments.

He then wisely leaves it to us to contemplate a final question about the likelihood that such massive change away from the dollar based system of payment and exchange will continue to be replaced and at what pace?

Thank you, Adam for doing that difficult work of digging and then synthesizing the thoughts and arguments of others whom we would never have been familiar with!!

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