Quote from: btc_n_economics on January 06, 2015, 02:15:54 PM

Quote from: B.A.S. on January 06, 2015, 03:18:14 AM

As long as oil is priced in USD, the US government can continuing printing dollars to pay for it and to maintain reserve currency status. If the oil agreement folds, the US can continue printing money, but the economy will suffer. This is one of the ways the US became so big so quickly.

The US looks like its suffering from Dutch Disease with its export being currency and not natural resources. Once the currency well dries up, banks will lose some power and the US will begin a multi-decade race to once again ramp up manufacturing (Made in America TM) to try to mitigate the loss. Problem with this will be that because of the eventual USD decoupling, it will be a race to the bottom.

This is where I believe Bitcoin comes in. SDRs under the guidance of the IMF are nothing new; essentially, a world currency basket to hedge currency volatility. Dump all your country's debt into an SDR and well, you know the rest.

The US does not need oil to be priced in USD to "print money". This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the way our monetary system works. It is not something that can be argued because it is a fact like 1+1=2. The Federal Reserve can create reserves out of thin air. This is what people call "printing money". But it is not actually money printed into our economy as you say. The banks have to lend in order for new money to be created outside of the federal reserve system. Banks only lend if qualified borrowers want to borrow. This is why we have not had inflation despite the Fed "printing" trillions of dollars over the last few years. The reserve simply sit on the banks balance sheets, there is no mechanism to turn them into cash besides market forces like demand.

Why would the US not be trying to ramp up manufacturing now, and instead waiting for some event? They are manufacturing more today. Every individual company tries to maximize profits, there is not one God of USA that says hey, we should all do manufacturing real good now. It's thousands of companies that work independently in the economy to make a buck.

I'm afraid I do not know the rest. What I do know is that you are talking about getting rid of volatility with BTC which is down 70% in a year. That makes no sense. Look at a chart of the USD over the last ten years and compare it to BTC - which would you rather hold your $ in if you are looking for stability and not wild speculation? You have ideas about FX and the USD but they are not based on facts and are non sequitur.

I agree, the US doesn't need oil to be priced in USD to print money. I never said that. What I was alluding to was because oil happens to be dominated in USD, the US (aka the Fed-a private entity) can print money that is never disseminated into the economy (i.e. lended to banks as you've said above). What this allows the US to do is simultaneously buy oil with money that is non-inflationary on the US economy, purchase a commodity and sell it back to its economy at deflationary prices for a profit. Essentially, on the books it looks like the US economy is booming with all the capital coming in (cheap gas prices mean more spending, traveling; generally linked to improved economic conditions), but in reality, the money never existed and is being injected into the economy from an outside way to mitigate economic inflation on the home front due to the printing of USD. The commodity oil is like fake money. It is a vehicle to control economic factors based upon what the commodity is denominated in primarily (currently USD). The US is the best house on a bad block right now.

Secondly, printing of money alone does not cause inflation (again I did not say this). When the real value of the economic output is mismatched with the amount of dollars circulating, this is how printing excess money (QE) becomes a problem. Without having the output to back up the QE, the US experiences inflation. If the US doesn't have the goods to support the high exchange value of the USD in the world economy, you get inflation. The only reason we have QE in the first place is because an economy that wants to grow fast and beyond its means (the US since forever) has to do it somehow

Step 1: you tell everyone your country has a ton of money by printing it
Step 2: Get them to buy your stuff/invest in you with 'real money'
Step 3: Economic boom town - profit
Step 4: Continue the process until every one is entirely dependent on your country for its economic value based on their currency that they won't let you fail

The US isn't ramping up manufacturing in response to some event. What I was talking about was bringing our manufacturing back to US soil and beginning to increase our world stake in the export market. Right now, all we export is dollars. You will see a return to American made products and a reinvestment in corporations housed in the the US. What this will do it allow us to export more products, decrease our reliance on QE and strengthen our hold on the world market. If we let go of being the reserve currency (we will eventually), we have to be a frontrunner in something otherwise the US stands to lose a hold on the world.

The debt in the US doesn't matter, it never has. In the 40s/early 50s, we actually volunteered as a country more or less to be the world reserve post WWII (see Bretton Woods Conference) since we had lots of economic resources and much power.

The volatility of Bitcoin right now is purely because of lack of no clear authoritative governance (as posters below say: a military). Eventually, if Bitcoin becomes a real thing, governments with lots of power and money and military will assume their slot in this, set up shop and push their economies in new ways using this technology.