China’s recent introduction of yuan-denominated oil futures has attracted some fairly extensive press commentary. Partly this is down to a habit of over-interpreting everything happening in China as just more evidence of their unstoppable rise to global superpower status, but it is also due to some profound misconceptions about the importance of oil as a commodity. It is widely thought, for example, that oil somehow underwrites the global financial system and guarantees the U.S. dollar’s hegemonic status.
Inevitably, stories about the toppling of the “Petro-dollar” and the long yearned for rise of an alternative reserve currency, one not dependent on the whims of a capricious political elite in Washington, have proliferated across the alter-net and on the state-backed media platforms of Russia and China.
But we should be clear: the Petro-dollar does not exist, and really hasn’t done in any meaningful way since the 1970s, therefore the “Petro-yuan” has no future. This is not to say that oil will never be traded in yuan, that is likely, but it is to say that trading oil in yuan will not suddenly transform the currency into the global reserve many claim is inevitable. [footnote] (It may be true that the Petro-yuan has no future, or that a change won’t be “sudden”, but this doesn’t prove that having oil trade in dollars isn’t still very important to the US)[/footnote]
Origins Of The Petro-Dollar
The myth of the Petro-dollar comes from efforts in the 1970s to prevent the U.S. suffering severe negative effects in its balance of payments from rising oil prices.[footnote](Couldn’t it be said that the cause of these deficits was also, in part, cold war military spending and the Vietnam war) [/footnote] Until the late 1960s the U.S. had been an oil-exporter, but by also being an oil consumer they had never sought to maximize the rent from oil production by driving prices upwards. OPEC countries, however, never had such qualms [footnote](To portray this as financial opportunism by OPEC ignores other factors, such as the US’s significantly increasing the price it charged for wheat and supporting their enemy – Israel). Whether you approve or disapproval, isn’t it simplistic or misleading to attribute oil price increases to the idea that “OPEC never had such qualms”.[/footnote] when the opportunity arose as the U.S. became an importer, happily restrained supply to drive prices, and their own national incomes, higher. The U.S. was worried about the resultant trade deficit caused by suddenly having to pay vast amounts for necessary imports, and so secured the agreement of Saudi Arabia to only trade oil in U.S. dollars, meaning the U.S. could pay for oil in their own currency. Saudi Arabia, for their part, accumulated huge reserves of U.S. dollars, investing some of them back into the U.S. economy.
The enormous lake of U.S. dollars this created augmented the role of the dollar as the global reserve currency, being a highly liquid, easily-exchanged claim on the products, services and investment potential generated by the U.S. economy. But this was merely one step in the rise of the greenback as the global reserve. The next step came when other economies–East Asia in particular–followed the lead of the oil producers and also built up huge reserves of U.S. dollars, all of which was made possible by the abandonment of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system in the early 1970s. This practice helped to keep exchange rates for exporters low, and kept a lid on inflation in the U.S., which suited everyone up to a point.
Future Petro-Yuan?
Bringing this up to date, it was a long time ago when the link between oil and the dollar mattered much at all beyond the financial returns of non-dollar based oil companies. Since the 1980s, the dollar has been consolidated as the global reserve currency because of the strength and dynamism of the U.S. economy, and oil exporters have demanded to be paid in U.S. dollars because that’s the currency they prefer to hold on to. To do otherwise is to take on exchange risk. Exporters can, and routinely do, accept payment in whatever exchange medium they wish — tanks, planes and construction services — but their central banks demand dollars for reasons entirely unconnected to oil. Because the U.S. dollar is a hard currency, easily exchangeable, underwritten by the U.S. taxpayer, and founded upon decades of broadly consistent macro-economic policy management.
Those who believe that oil being traded in U.S. dollars gives the U.S. economy a unique advantage in the global economy have it exactly the wrong way around. The U.S. economy is the central economy in the global system because it is the most open, innovative, and productive economy in the world, and because of this, the U.S. dollar is the most convenient, liquid and reliable medium of exchange. [footnote](This is the argument that the US Dollar deserves its dominance and the advantages the petrodollar gives it, not that it is unimportant to the US that oil trade in dollars)[/footnote] One can imagine another currency challenging it at some point in the future, but only on the basis of the openness of its underlying economy, and the depth of the capital markets denominated in it. And if the euro can’t do it yet, why does anyone imagine the yuan is up to the job?
Furthermore, the U.S. dollar’s position as the global reserve currency has been underwritten by Chinese economic policy. China has deliberately built up a huge pile of U.S. dollar-denominated reserves which, contrary to much press coverage and occasional threats of a big selloff from China, confirms rather than undermines the dollar’s status.
Yuan-Denominated Oil Futures?
When China, like any other economy, allows the trading of oil futures in yuan, the contract merely promises dated delivery of oil in exchange for yuan. The contract does not supply the oil, it does not forward the yuan to an oil producer, it is merely a transaction that allows a buyer guaranteed delivery of oil by paying for it in yuan. The counter-party has to supply the oil in exchange for the yuan. Somewhere along the supply-chain someone will be paying in U.S. dollars, unless the ultimate supplier wishes to hold yuan. And despite the fanfare over the last few years, the yuan still comprises a tiny share of foreign exchange reserves held globally. Indeed, at 1.1% of the total, the yuan is significantly behind both the Australian and Canadian dollars, meaning that–with pound sterling–Queen Elizabeth II’s head appears on 7.5 times more foreign currency reserves than Mao’s. If China wants to change that, it will need to open up its economy, liberate its capital account and start living up to, rather than repudiating, its reform promises. Shanghai-traded oil futures in themselves have nothing to do with it.
How would the US react to the collapse of the Petro-dollar system?
If the petrodollar collapsed, the entire world would collapse with it into an economic crisis worse than the Great Depression. For a while.
A little history:
In the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, the US dollar was tied to gold at a fixed rate of 35 dollars per troy ounce of gold. This made the dollar very attractive as a reserve currency for many countries and created an artificial demand for dollars that allowed the US to print out money without it resulting in inflation. At one point the US held about 80% of the world’s gold reserves.
However, the US has a history for being bad at balancing budgets. In 1971, near the end of the Vietnam War, the US had a massive fiscal deficit. In the same way you fear for your money if your bank is making bad investments, countries who had their reserves in dollars started to feel uneasy with the way the US was spending (or printing money). They started buying back gold with the dollars they had, the equivalent of a bank run. The US realized it didn’t have enough gold reserves to cover the massive amounts of money they had printed out (like a fractional reserve bank), and so they unilaterally decided to let the dollar float in what is now called the Nixon Shock. It was a virtual default. Since then, the USD has lost more than 30 times its purchasing power relative to gold.
Without gold backing the dollar, demand for dollars would have collapsed. In fact, for a while, the “oil shocks” that resulted from Nixon’s decision caused considerable economic instability and inflation. The US had to figure out a way to stabilize and solidify the dollar.
So, how did they do it?
First, a deal was struck with Saudi Arabia, by far the biggest producer of crude oil in the 70s, that required them to sell their oil exclusively in US dollars. In exchange, the US offered the Saudis weapons and protection, something they readily accepted given the Middle East’s propencity to military conflict (in part exacerbated by the US itself). And thus the petrodollar was born. The idea was to make the global oil trade depend on the dollar, creating the demand needed to prevent too much inflation.
It was certainly easier for everyone (even if you had your differences with the US) to trade oil in US dollars, because it made markets more accessible, competitive and transparent. Soon after the Saudi deal, the entire world was trading oil in dollars, even the USSR. But it gave the US a massive amount of control, and since then the US has defended this fiercely with military force and political scheming. Recently, Gaddafi and Saddam tried to challenge the petrodollar, and the US immediately gave them a good dose of “democracy”. Saddam was falsely accused of having WMDs. They didn’t even bother to make up a good story for Gaddafi, and simply said he was an evil, corrupt despot (which he incidentally was). They’re both dead now. Al Qaeda and ISIS are both the result of the US funding proxy wars to topple governments they wanted to control. Just a few examples.
The US is the middle-man for the most lucrative trade in the world and much of its prosperity depends on keeping it so. With a high demand for dollars, they keep inflation under control, because all countries subsidize the growing money supply when they buy oil. It has worked brilliantly. The US has issued debt like crazy (and let’s not even mention the fact that the FED is a private institution), and despite this has had super cheap debt, because everyone wants those precious dollars to buy oil.
This has gone on for over 40 years now. 40 years of continuous fiscal deficits, military intervention in the Middle East (Iraq 2x, Libya, Syria, etc), artificially cheap debt, and a manufactured demand for dollars. All financed by the entire world’s consumption of oil.
Meanwhile, globalization has made the dollar the cornerstone of not only the oil industry, but virtually everything else, particularly the financial industry.
But make no mistake: the dollar itself is the biggest economic bubble there’s ever been. There is a massively corrupt and greedy element of geopolitical control in the dollar, rotten to the core. That greed is ultimately, I think, the biggest source of hate, sorrow and war in today’s world.
And yes: were it to suddenly collapse, it would be a disaster. The dollar supply would far and away exceed demand, resulting in high inflation. Everyone all around the world would scramble to get rid of their dollar reserves. And since everything, everywhere is connected to the dollar, it would be a catastrophe. It would all have to start with the US losing control of the oil markets.
It’s already happening now, to some extent. We’ve seen many instances where the US just can’t deal with the economic and political threats through military intervention as it did in the past:
- China and Russia are pushing towards a non-US dollar oil market. China already has plans for a gold-backed oil futures contract in yuan. Basically, China will do what the US was doing pre-Nixon, and that’s what made everyone want to buy dollars at the time. It’s already being called a “game changer” for the oil industry. It is by far the biggest threat to the petro-dollar right now, and the US is powerless to stop it.
- The Syria affair, one of the biggest screw ups in foreign policy history. Aside from that one, the US has a massive PR issue in the Middle East in general.
- Venezuela is collapsing and it seems Russia and China are ready for scavenging.
Times have changed. Today, even piss-poor countries like North Korea can force the US into submission, by threatening to fire a ballistic missile across the world and flatten an entire city. The world has become too unstable to use force as an effective foreign policy instrument.
A complete collapse of the petrodollar can’t happen overnight, though, because the dollar is backed by not just oil, but the world’s biggest economy. It also wouldn’t be a complete collapse, because the US itself is one of the biggest oil producers in the world, so a big chunk of trading will always be done in US dollars.
But a decline will gradually happen. The US government is running the biggest ponzi scheme in history and in doing so is keeping the entire world’s economy hostage to the privately owned FED. Since 2008, the US printed about 3 trillion dollars in their “quantitative easing” program, quadrupling the FED’s reserves. But China, Europe and Russia all want a piece of the pie and are fighting for it. In fact, I think the entire world is a little bit fed up with the whole thing too, especially in Europe, where the monumental cluster f**k that is the Middle East has resulted in serious demographic problems that aren’t on some remote corner of the world anymore… They are at their doorstep.
Reserve Currency set by Country that offers Regime Protetion (Petro-Dollar)
Reserve Currency Status
Brainard’s speech didn’t address recent concerns regarding the reserve currency status concerns of the US dollar or China’s current lead in the CBDC race, which could advance its national interests. The reserve currency status is among others determined by the resilience of a country’s payment system, depth and trust in the well-functioning of the capital markets and exchanges, appeal to and innovation acumen of its tech industry and financial market infrastructure, international thought leadership, lead into climate change solutions and the global military might and power base, which reinforces adoption of a currency. (Customers pay for oil in the currency of the nation which offers regime protection at the oil fields. Asians and Europeans move every month out of their home currency in favor of the US Dollar to pay for their imported oil bill). Global adoption can also be ensured if censorship or control concerns, linked to the use of the CBDC, can be substantially mitigated.
Referring to innovation acumen and climate change solutions, could the central bank digital currency project incorporate scientific data observations regarding climate change triggering terrestrial and atmospheric trends? Could TRACE, a consortium tracking greenhouse gas emissions 24/7 by satellite, foster a balance between monetary policy and a thriving planet and be made part of this initiative? Could monetary policy be framed incorporating observations from those data trends, with support from climate scientists? Could digital currency be directed at ZIP code levels, impacted by climate change calamities? From a supervisory perspective, could solvency weightings for banks’ asset exposure be dynamically set as a function of the data observations and the remaining finite carbon budget? Could bank stress testing scenarios under CCAR (Comprehensive Capital Assessment and Review), undertaken to assess the banks’ adequacy of solvency levels, be articulated as an extended continuum of such climate change observations?
Innovative monetary design ingenuity linked to climate change solutions can only solidify the continued appeal in the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
The Current Five-Headed Crisis
The current crisis is five-headed in nature, characterized by a
- public health crisis, a
- financial crisis, a
- social justice crisis, a
- climate change crisis and a
- trust crisis in institutions and international trade.
Could a central bank digital crypto currency address each of the crisis challenges? How could financial inclusion offer a dent into the social injustice paradigm? How could distributed, decentralized and crypto-graphed data sharing enhance trust in institutions? How could the Central Bank consensus protocol be made more energy efficient than the private crypto-currency protocols? How could smart contract design introduce a central bank digital currency-based reward economy?
Instead of offering mere helicopter money, could compensation be offered in exchange for contributions to the regenerative (climate change) and caring economy (childcare and parental care at home)? How could blockchain supported supply chain data trace the global export and import flows in relationship to FX trades and exchange rates? How could market intervention and/or sustainable change to circular economic paradigms be steered on the back of those data?
Need For A New Anchor Currency
The debasing of currencies by the most important central banks ($6 Trillion of QE in the US alone), the arising currency tensions in the emerging markets (e.g. Lebanon, Turkey, South-Africa,….) and the COVID-19 default impact on total debt outstanding of $258 trillion per Q1 2020 will only accelerate the need and call for debt rescheduling and ensuing FX rate mechanism interventions. If gold is no longer an option, could a central bank issued stablecoin, finite in supply, become a store of value or new anchor currency to manage the restructurings and market support activities?
Brainard’s speech makes reference to a new initiative with the Bank of International Settlement’s Innovation Hub. This initiative could provide a useful avenue to design such Central Bank stablecoin.
The collateral base of the stablecoin could consist of a reserve of natural capital assets, consisting of
- 50% of land and forests,
- 35% In renewable energy initiatives, and
- 10% in the top 100 most compliant ESG companies and
- 5% in biotech research.
The collateral base would be managed dynamically, but would also benefit from monetary policy and prudential supervisory decisions aimed at regenerating the natural capital base on earth and replenishing its finite carbon reserve. The supply could be managed, within a range, as a function of the TRACE observations.
On the occasion of Bretton Woods II, the new Central Bank Stablecoin could be introduced and offered, akin to the gold standard, as a fixed rate against all other fiat currencies, including the US dollar.
Conclusion
Milton Friedman once observed, only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. Then, ideas once dismissed as unrealistic or impossible might just become inevitable.