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Article does not make sense to me. Starts off with the Triffin dilemma; its definition of the concept as "the incompatible conditions that dollars must be suppl
by cherryteastain 1y ago
Article does not make sense to me. Starts off with the Triffin dilemma; its definition of the concept as "the incompatible conditions that dollars must be supplied to the world, but at the same time, they must maintain trust and control" has nothing to do with the actual Triffin dilemma. The actual dilemma does talk about the need for the reserve currency issuer to supply the world with the currency, but the actual concept juxtaposes this obligation with the inevitable trade deficits which the reserve currency issuer incurs.
The Triffin dilemma famously led to the Nixon shock in the US which ended the convertibility of the dollar to gold in the 70s, due to massive US trade deficits making it impossible to keep 1:1 backing for the USD in gold. The Nixon shock is mentioned in the article, but not how/why is happened. Neither is there an explanation of what the "second Nixon shock" is.
There is some mention of EUR/CNY digital currencies; perhaps the point is that these can challenge the USD hegemony by creating alternate globally accepted payment systems, with the second Nixon shock being the "end of USD hegemony" scenario brought up every few years?
- dnpp123 1y agoCame here to say this. I'm quite curious to know what the author means by "digital Nixon Shock". If hard digital assets (i.e. assets the US have limited control over like BTC, ETH, etc) gets shocked by a liquidity shortage it should on the contrary kill more of the USD dominance, which will shock more hard assets, which will kill more of the USD dominance... a feedback loop leading to the obliteration of the USD hegemon.