That's exactly what he's talking and why Ripple is intriguing. Currently to send money across distances you need a clearing house. You are correct that Hawala does this without a clearing house & Ripple is a digital version of Hawala.
The reason why you want this is because people use different local currencies. If my Chinese supplier only accept RMB as payment and if I want to use BTC how can the transfer take place? Either there is a clearing house that takes my BTC and gives him RMB or something like Ripple.
+1 I had a whole post typed out but I honestly couldn't say it much better than that. I will add, if your making a BTC -> BTC payment, you don't need Ripple. Just send wallet to wallet. What reality is showing though, is most merchants don't accept BTC, they accept USD and they require a middleman or central clearing house, to facilitate that transaction. In this case, BitPay and Coinbase.