Last month’s BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, was, like all summits, heavy on photo ops. And it yielded a second act that was similarly heavier on symbolism than substance: the release of a report by the Russian finance ministry and central bank on “improvement of the international monetary and financial system,” by which Russian officials obviously meant “finding an alternative to the weaponized dollar.”
Expressions of dissatisfaction with the dominance of the dollar over global money and finance go back at least to French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in 1965, who famously lamented the greenback’s “exorbitant privilege.” Indeed, the desire for an alternative played no small part in the creation of the euro 34 years later.
Herein lies the rub for the BRICS (named for its founding members Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). Creating the euro took 34 years. It necessarily built on a half-century of other steps that deepened European integration and established shared political institutions. And the euro, in any case, has shown no signs of challenging the dollar, or even of modestly denting its global supremacy.
Policymakers in emerging markets have in fact offered a long list of possible substitutes for the dollar. None of their proposals has borne fruit. In 2009, People’s Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Zhou Xiaochuan suggested replacing dollar reserves with the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights. It quickly became apparent that no one was particularly interested in holding, much less using, an artificial asset pegged to an arbitrary currency basket.
Chinese officials then embarked on a campaign to promote use of the renminbi in international payments. In fact, Chinese firms now settle a majority of their cross-border transactions in renminbi. Globally, however, the renminbi accounts for less than 6% of trade settlements, while Chinese capital controls and governance issues limit the currency’s utility for financial transactions. Despite having built a Cross-Border Interbank Payments System, Chinese banks clear barely 3% of the daily transactions, by value, of US-based clearing houses.
Then came proposals for a BRICS currency, constituted as a weighted average of existing BRICS currencies, or perhaps backed by gold or other commodities. But a BRICS basket currency was not a natural fit for any of its member countries’ exporters. With no BRICS equivalent of the European Central Bank, which manages the euro, or of the European Parliament, to which the ECB answers, fundamental questions – like who would manage it – remained unanswered.
A gold-backed currency would have obvious appeal to major gold producers like Russia and South Africa. But payments would be expensive, insofar as they involved actual gold shipments. If “gold-backed” meant convertible into gold at the prevailing market price, then the unit would not be stable. If it meant convertible at a fixed price, this would be tantamount to donning the straitjacket of the gold standard.
There have since been discussions of local currency settlement, like those occupying Russia and India for much of 2023. But this could work only if bilateral trade were perfectly balanced, with neither country having much appetite for accumulating the currency of the other. The benefits of multilateral trade would be lost. Predictably, these Russia-India talks led nowhere – except to Kazan.
The Russian report to the BRICS summit recommended a common platform for cross-border payments using a set of BRICS central-bank digital currencies. This could avoid having to go through the dollar, the US banking system, and the SWIFT interbank payment service. The Bank for International Settlements has helped to develop such a platform, known as Project mBridge, with the participation of five central banks, including the PBOC, which is said to be privy to the technical details, having designed many of them. The accession of additional emerging markets could provide for own-currency settlement while preserving a modicum of multilateralism. Participants might be happy about holding one another’s currencies now that these were usable at low cost throughout the bloc.
But if the technological problem has been solved, the governance problem remains. Participants would have to agree on who to license as foreign-exchange dealers on the platform, or on the exchange rate at which to execute trades algorithmically. They would have to agree on who was responsible for providing liquidity, and under what conditions. They would have to agree on a dispute-settlement mechanism. They would have to agree on privacy and data-protection laws and practices, and how to guard against cyber threats. They would have to agree on the enforcement of anti-money-laundering rules. They would have to agree on which central banks could join over time. They would have to agree on ownership and voting shares, analogous to ownership and voting shares in SWIFT.
In their Kazan Declaration, summit participants limply “recognized” the role of the BRICS in improving the international monetary and financial system, and “took note” of the Russian report. No one should be surprised that they failed to do more.
Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author, most recently, of In Defense of Public Debt (Oxford University Press, 2021). Project Syndicate, (c) 2024, published here with permission.
26 Comments
The USA should be worried that 1/3 of the worlds population is trying to start up an alternative. It will take time but I think it will gather ever increasing strength. The USA is in debt up to its eyeballs, the rest of the world is waking up to the fact the USA is just printing money.
100% agree. The only growth the US economy has had under Biden is entirely debt funded. If Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy really do cut up to 2T from the Federal budget the US economy will implode. This actually needs to happen to reset the cost base to allow real growth to occur. The issue is it will undermine the global reserve currency and allow BRICS to gain more traction. It's only a matter of time before a considerable amount of global trade has payment terms/currency dictated by the BRICS. They are simply too big to ignore and control too much of what the world needs.
What is this 'real growth'? How would you measure it? Our ability to produce and consume a few per cent more resources next year compared to this? Is growth driven by Govt deficit spending not the same as growth driven by bank lending (or people investing their savings)?
The USA should be worried that 1/3 of the worlds population is trying to start up an alternative
The governments of 1/3 of the world are trying to start up an alternative.
The bulk of the citizens of those countries would likely happily trade their domestic currency to USD.
The USA is in debt up to its eyeballs, the rest of the world is waking up to the fact the USA is just printing money.
Everyone's printing money. In fact, foreign governments and corporations can also issue bonds convertible into US dollars.
I'm guessing that you are using a debt to GDP ratio. Once you factor in how much of the US GDP has nothing to do with a productive economy eg. massive healthcare insurance costs which provide very little actual beneficial healthcare, the US debt situation looks much worse, not better.
“ The USA is in debt up to its eyeballs” - is this actually true? Government debt less than half of Japans. Household debt a bit more than half of the Aussies.
Good question. It seems that Japanese national debt has doubled since the early 2000s. But US national debt has increased fivefold.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1500356/government-debt-securities-…
https://www.investopedia.com/us-national-debt-by-year-7499291
It's much more dramatic than that Zwifter - on a population basis around 87% of the global population reside in countries that desperately want to join the BRICS. If it wasn't for blatant neo-colonial intimidation, then that number would be even greater
Leading into the summit there were so many applications pending that the process had to be suspended to allow processing in an orderly fashion.
THE DOGS BARK BUT THE CARAVAN MOVES ON
Does this summit sound remotely like an event that is "heavier on symbolism than substance"? This is very much a case of the old Bedouin saying - "the dogs bark but the caravan moves on" - except this is no mere caravan, this is much more like an unstoppable juggernaut.
To add to the 9 existing full members a further 51 countries have either expressed interest in joining BRICS or have already applied for membership at the time they held the Summit.
15 out of 20 of the world's most populous countries are either included in this list of full members, or are in the process of joining.
Those countries with over 100 million people include China and India, both at 1.425 billion, Indonesia 278 million, Pakistan 243 million, Nigeria 223 million, Bangladesh 169 million, Russia 145 million, Ethiopia 125 million, Egypt 112 million, Congo 102 million, and Vietnam which is just short at 99 million.
14 out of the 20 largest oil producers are on this list too.
KEYNESIAN ECONOMICS - MORE HOLES THAN SWISS CHEESE
This article IMO is shocking in its ommissions, and as you point out, the US is in debt up to its eyeballs.
The US public debt at over 130% of GDP grows at more than $1 trillion every 100 days, when the first $1 trillion took almost 200 years to accumulate.
This is only the tip of the iceberg though - when it comes to total debt, including unfunded liabilities, the US total debt, just like most of the Western-centric countries, is over 600% - of course that uncomfortable fact is never mentioned by the Keynesian spin doctors.
A quick check of the US real-time debt reveals some absolute shockers. It also means that every dollar the government spends increases the GDP by less than that amount. This renders the borrow and spend stimulus measures self-defeating, as debt grows at a far higher pace than nominal GDP, let alone an honest measure of real GDP.
Last time I checked the total US debt per US citizen was well over $500K per citizen, and rapidly approaching $1 million per tax-payer. The entire Western casino is technically insolvent - it's an obscene Ponzi scheme that spans the world, creating ever more debt and money printing, just to try to delay the inevitable and mathematical certainty of a major systemic financial meltdown.
I haven't even mentioned the global derivatives which are estimated at between $2.5 quadrillion and 3.7 quad (notional value) - IOWs between 30-45 times global GDP. This is a black hole within a black hole of casino gambling just waiting to explode in our faces.
It is bewildering for me to see this author's assault on sound money when fiat has already proven itself in aiding the train wreck and the socio-economic breakdown of much of the globe through the gigantic wealth gap created between the haves and the have-nots. In a financial capitalism model, those who are closest to the money spigots reap all the benefits - money never trickles down - quite the reverse.
The financial plutocratic network buy academia and the narratives too, just as they bought out Big-pharma, Big-tech and the MIC, the three biggest political lobbies on the planet. Four gigantic financial corporations, Citigroup JPMC, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs are the puppet masters that manage the US monetary and fiscal policy - any Congressman that doesn't dance to their tune is gone after a fleeting two-year term and replaced by another chosen shill.
GOOD OLD MR TRIFFIN
Also, the effect of the Triffin Paradox, where no country with a productive real economy would ever desire to have its national currency as the overwhelming global reserve currency, is ignored too. Reserve currency status that doubles as national currency is a boomerang, especially if it is weaponised, that will come back and hit the incumbent nation behind the ear.
A TALE OF TWO ECONOMIES
People who ignore this ‘Tale of Two Economies’ will miss what is happening right under our noses as the Western model continues to machine-gun itself in both feet.
To me all of the evidence is on display that the Western model is reaching the climax of this self-evisceration as now we see even the main productive and export-based Western-based powerhouses beginning to fail spectacularly – ALL of them.
Of course, the classic financial casino countries lead the way, but now the real economy behemoths like Japan, Germany, and South Korea, are either kaput or have huge cracks appearing as they charge full steam ahead into self-inflicted debt death trap vortexes.
There are now multiple ways for countries that comprehend all of this to safeguard themselves from severe and imminent counter-party risk in the way they deploy their surpluses and reserves – including in physical gold, silver which I believe will be remonetized very soon, and of course a whole host of durable commodities including all manner of non-monetary metals.
ROME VERSION II
So too the ommissions and the glaring misrepresentations of the technical challenges, which I won't detail here for fear of this post turning into even more of a marathon.
Once upon a time, it was hard to imagine that the Spanish, Dutch, and British empires with their reserve currencies would all lose both their relevance and their status - until they did - and now Rome II burns and reactions, based on eCONomic mysticism, pour petrol on the flames.
Colin Maxwell
The US has abused its position over the last 75 odd years resulting in this desire to move away from the dollar. BRICS might succeed but I doubt it. SA is an economic mess predominantly due to corruption as is Russia due to the war. India and maybe Brazil hold out some hope. India has Russia by the shorts requiring Russia to buy oil in Rupees so you already have dissension there. It's unfortunate that the Euro has not come up to expectations in reducing the role of the USD.
Currencies, like relationships, rely quite a lot on intangibles like goodwill, trust & respect to prosper, and these are from you towards your trading partner, as well as their goodwill, trust & respect towards you. These traits are hard-earned & worse, can be easily lost or misplaced if something goes wrong along the way. Easily done these days. Earning someone's trust is a long game, not a short game, at least it is if you want the relationship to continue to the benefit of both or all of the parties involved.
Yes, the USA is struggling like the rest of us, but they too turned left instead of right all those years ago, which is as we all know now, wasn't a very wise decision. Yes, I'm looking at you Obama.
The comeback is on, however, in Europe as well as in North America & a hellay-luya to that, thank goodness. The wests weirdos may have to take a back seat for the time being, although the UK may take a year or so to catch up, but with Canada & Australia close to turning right again as their people realise how the left continues to leave things in a worse condition than when they found it, wherever they go.
If the brics are to create a currency to compete with the US$ then, as the article alludes to, a lot of things have to fall into place, with a heap of goodwill, trust & respect from all parties towards all other parties, needs to be proven just within the bric cultures, for a start, IMHO. I'm sorry, but Russia, China, South Africa, India & Brasil do not strike me as nations being even close to those 3 key attributes, even within their own individual cultures, let alone as a group of nations.
Good luck with that..
Your nom-de-plume fits, in this case.
Left and Right are inapplicable; both consume resources. The problem now is that the biggest resource-consumer - is no longer the biggest consumer. And it's amassing eye-watering unrepayable debt. And its infrastructure is crumbling. The out-pirates will outflank the dying hegemony - that's just how it goes.
We were lucky enough to be on the side of the winners in two world wars, and it's been a dream run. But that era came to an end for Britain decades ago, and is coming to an end for the US now - it's very close to becoming a failed State. The irony is that no pretender can ever scale to where the US once was - there isn't enough planet left... Right?
Or a crypto currency?
An then - add few more. And a few more. And a few more. And a few more. And a few more.
Until there are so many different 'currencies' being used that nobody cares much about sovereign currencies. And given we all carry around advanced calculators, that are wired to the latest exchange rates, we flash the phone and it tells us what something costs in our chosen currency.
Think about it. There's no hope for a BRICS currency. Nor the USD either ....
Most of these crypto currencies have the founders/early adopters sitting on a very large proportion of the total available currency. So it remains to be seen whether the masses (whether individuals, or public or private institutions) are going to adopt any of them at scale for either their domestic or international purchases.
I can understand why people would want to use a crypto currency as a store or value, but I still can't see where the value proposition lies as a usable currency. Greshams law makes the two uses incompatible.
"Most of these crypto currencies have the founders/early adopters sitting on a very large proportion of the total available currency. "
Sorry Pa1nter. Forgive me for putting that assertion into the 'folksie wisdom' category (once again).
Might I respectfully encourage you to bone up on some facts? Not all cryptocurrencies are alike. And many will never be a "store of value".
You could start with this cryptocurrency as some plonker loves to manipulate its value ... most say for his own gain.
I did use the word "most" for a reason.
And no forgiveness needed, you've made it abundantly clear by now you and I adopt very different models to view and interact with the world. Not sure why you need to keep highlighting that, when our discourse often speaks for itself. Well, I do, but it only serves to detract from any point you're trying to make.
Perhaps you can add some resolution to a picture where you have umpteen number of cryptocurrency ecosystems. Why would people be operating a significant number of their transactions within those, rather than the status quo. It's adding additional complexity or conversion, and I can't see the improved utility.
Good site if you're interested in other 'mosts' like 'most used' or 'most circulating', etc.
Crypto is a total joke, do the math. Split the total crypto to everyone in the world and we all get like what $5 each ?. The banks will at some point issue a digital currency, we are most of the way there already, they just need to pull all the physical cash out of circulation.
That is exactly the point I'm making. It was recognised in economic circles way back when a friend of mine and I started mining the original bitcoin as a hobby project that allowed us to drink beer while watching electrons die and graphics cards melt.
"Kinda at odds with the whole point of money..." ... The primary purpose of money for the vast majority of people is as a medium of exchange.
"... but I'm waiting for additional context." ... It's already out there. So sorry, I can't be bothered providing additional context.
... Including cryptocurrencies arguing over whether they should be a 'store of value' or 'a medium of exchange', or trying to be both by constantly dividing the base unit into ever smaller segments, e.g. BTC with their milli-bitcoin, micro-bitcoin and Satoshi (1/100,000,000 of a BTC). PoS currencies IMO will win out over PoW currencies for general usage but the original PoW currenecies will continue to have their place.
You were a BTC miner? Is this true or an internet fable? Not saying I don't necessarily believe you but all those I know involved in non-commercial BTC mining had/have pretty deep conviction about what BTC represents and many had elements from cyberpunk / tech / anarchist personas.
I did a lot of R&D work on SSL in the 90s so learnt about cryptography at that time. One of my occasional drinking buddies was an ICT engineer specializing in extremely high-performance kit, often utilizing GPUs in novel ways. Our common interest being making stuff run really, really fast. We had the kit and skills. The s/w was open source (and buggy as hell). A bit of intellectual curiosity, a general understanding of economics, combined with a "let's stick it to the Man" attitude, and off we went, contributing to the community as we went. We also saw it as inevitable government regulation would cancel the fun - as it needs to. (That won't happen for another 4 years - or longer - thanks to the Orange One.) When commoditized high performance mining kit became common we closed up shop. The fun had gone as it became a sick game for billionaires rorting an unregulated market.
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