The Day The Dollar Died

June 12th, 2024 was The Day The Dollar Died.

It hasn’t collapsed yet, and won’t for some time. Like a wild hog, it will fight on, mortally wounded and bleeding, until it finally staggers, stumbles, then falls. The dollar is too big, too bound up in the global economy to go down to a single shot. It’s suffered nicks and scrapes these last few years, and will suffer more in the days to come, but Wednesday, June 12th was when the fatal blow landed.

That was the day Russia suspended trading in dollars and euros on the Moscow Exchange.

"Due to the introduction of restrictive measures by the United States against the Moscow Exchange Group, exchange trading and settlements of deliverable instruments in U.S. dollars and euros are suspended," the Russian central bank said, as reported by Reuters.

The move came on the heels of a new round of sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department against over 300 entities and individuals, including a number of Chinese component suppliers. Along with new export restrictions on semiconductors and other technology goods levied by the Commerce Department, the intent is to significantly interfere with Russia’s ability to continue smashing NATO equipment and slaughtering Ukrainians in job lots.

So, tit for tat. That’s a game Cousin Vlad seems to be more and more willing to play with the NeoClowns in DC and their EUdiot accomplices. Witness his sending a naval group to Cuba, over the protests of the squawking heads inside the Washington Beltway. Most reports I’ve seen say these vessels aren’t carrying nukes, but they are nuclear-capable. Just like the NeoClowns want to make Ukraine part of NATO, then move in the nukes—but we expect Russia to be totally fine with that despite Putin, Lavrov and every other senior Russian official saying that’s something they will not tolerate.

How long will it be before there are Russian hypersonic missiles—the kind we still don’t have—based in Cuba? They’ll go well with the Chinese spy bases that have been there for years now, especially since the Chinese have them, too.

As if that weren’t enough, on Thursday it was announced that $50 billion of frozen Russian assets in Europe would be given to Ukraine as a “loan.” This is something else that Putin has warned the West against doing, calling it what it is—blatant theft. His government has already started taking steps to seize Western assets in the Rodina. This is yet another tit for tat game we shouldn’t be playing on the global chessboard, so naturally our Fearless Leaders are doubling down on it.

Russia closing their principle Exchange to dollars and euros isn’t enough, by itself, to kill the dollar. The BRICS have been working for some time to extricate themselves from the dollar/euro and the SWIFT system. These new sanctions are just the latest in a long string of incidents that are regarded by the rest of the world as financial bullying of the worst sort.

For decades, the global financial web that grew out of Bretton Woods has been both carrot and stick, used by the first world to cajole and whip the second and third world into compliance with the first world’s desires. Do something America doesn’t like? Sanctions, freezes and other unpleasantness. Want to borrow money from the IMF and World Bank, the two Bretton Woods institutions that survived Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971? Get ready to toe the line, and get ready to pay dearly in terms of your country’s resources for the privilege of owing that money. After all, it’s not colonialism if it’s the global banksters doing it!

The initial round of sanctions that were dropped on Russia two years ago when it began the Special Military Operation in Ukraine only accelerated what was already being planned. The BRICS and the Global South have had enough of the West’s (read: America’s) financial bullying. Sadly for the NeoClowns and the Davos set, those sanctions haven’t done what they intended. In fact, they’ve backfired spectacularly. Russia’s economy is now growing at twice the rate ours is, and recently became the world’s fourth largest economy, pushing Japan to number five in 2021 (not Germany, as was initially reported). It’s stayed there ever since, despite all the sanctions. Putin has been selling his oil and natural gas through intermediaries and making buckets of rubles, while our Green Raw Dealers and Climate Cultists have been doing everything they can to cripple our fossil fuel industry.

Serious leaders like Putin (and Trump) know that energy is everything to an economy. There’s a linear relationship between GDP and energy consumption, and the vast majority of that has been, is, and will for the foreseeable future be oil and gas.

Is it a coincidence that the long-standing agreement with Saudi Arabia to only trade oil in dollars expired just a few days ago? Or that Saudi Crown Prince MBS just “declined” an invitation to the current G7 meeting? Or that the Saudis, MBS in particular, are said to despise Biden?

Say “buh bye” to the almighty petrodollar! I’m sure MBS’s “regrets” note to the G7 was a very polite and diplomatic #GFY. The Saudis aren’t stupid. Give them a chance to stick it to Biden (again) while moving closer to the current winning side? Of course that’s what they’re doing!

For months now, the BRICS have been laying the structural framework for their own parallel international currency exchange, completely separate from the Euro-American-controlled SWIFT system. On June 11th, one day before the dollar/euro ban on the Moscow Exchange occurred, the BRICS Economics Ministers announced they were in their final stages of de-dollarization. They’re already using their own national currencies for trade, and have promised a blockchain-based BRICS monetary unit in the near future. China has already seen its yuan rocket to be the number one currency traded on the Moscow Exchange.

Collectively the BRICS have 30% of the earth’s landmass, 45% of the population and 33% of the world’s GDP (3% more than the G7). Thailand and Pakistan are just the latest countries to actively seek to join, with a total of 59 nations expressing interest in BRICS membership. The BRICS Games were opened by Putin on the 12th, and will bring together 5,000 athletes from 97 countries in Kazan, Russia for the next two weeks.

Putin, Xi, and the BRICS are winning. The NeoClowns and Davos globalists…are not. This latest round of sanctions won’t be any more effective than the previous ones at stopping the debacle that is Ukraine. If anything, they’ll likely encourage Xi to move on Taiwan, just to hamstring the West by taking out the Taiwan chip factories. Not that I think Xi needs any more encouragement—worst case scenario, Taiwan has another four to six weeks of freedom left, if that. I really hope I’m wrong, but Chinese interests are directly affected by these sanctions, and Xi can play tit for tat, too.

Meanwhile, old Joe is wandering off at the G7, and his handlers are praying he doesn’t poop his diaper in public again.

These new sanctions will drive Russia and China even closer together—something that was anathema to U.S. foreign policy for decades. Sadly, the Biden Regime and the WEFers gave them a common cause to unite against these last three years.

And without the petrodollar to use as leverage against the rest of the world? The West’s, and specifically America’s, outlook is grim.

That’s why Wednesday, June 12th, 2024 was The Day The Dollar Died. In their ongoing (futile) attempts to drown Russia in Ukrainian blood and American money, the NeoClowns handed Putin the perfect excuse to cut the dollar out of the Russian Exchange. At this point, the damage to the Russian economy will be minimal—two years of sanctions have seen to that—but the ripple effects on the dollar will be catastrophic.

When empires crumble and their currencies collapse, it’s the ordinary people who always suffer the most. Keep that in mind as you hear the empty platitudes and cheerful reassurances from our Fearless Leaders between now and November. They certainly won’t be suffering like we do as our money buys less and less, our shelves sit empty, and our cities burn.

Above all, remember that it didn’t have to be this way…but it is.

Dr. Bill Chitwood is a retired Child, Adolescent and Family Psychiatrist who does political consulting and media relations. He is the author of Beyond Maga, available on Amazon under his pen name, Doc Contrarian. He can be found on Substack and social media as @DocContrarian.

Opinions expressed in the Alabama Gazette are the opinions and viewpoints of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Alabama Gazette staff, advertisers, and/ publishers.