How the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ enriches the USA (and global elites)

How the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege’ enriches the USA (and global elites)

there’s a lot of debate these days about
the role of the US dollar as the global
Reserve currency there is one country on
Earth the United States that has the
ability to print the global Reserve
currency the US dollar is still used in
the vast majority of international trade
and it is still held as the main asset
in foreign exchange reserves of central
banks around the world and this has
given the United States the ability to
essentially export inflation to the rest
of the world and to maintain a massive
trade deficit with the rest of the world
for decades the US has imported
significantly more than it has produced
and the benefit that the US gets from
having its currency as the global
Reserve currency has been referred to as
an exorbitant privilege this is a term
that was popularized by France in the
1960s and it’s still used today this
issue has become especially important as
more and more countries around the world
are talking about
dollarization in particular with the
return of inflation in the US with
massive government deficits and also
with geopolitical conflict with the US
waging a new Cold War on China and
Russia and the US has also seized the
foreign exchange reserves of Russia
Venezuela Iran and Afghanistan and more
and more countries around the world are
seeking alternatives to the dollar so
this has led economists to debate just
what the consequences would be for the
United States if the dollar is unseeded
as the global Reserve currency as we
move into a more multi-polar World other
currencies are being used for
international trade and being held in
Central Bank Reserves and other assets
like gold have become very popular for
foreign Central Banks well today I’m
going to be looking at a very
interesting study that was published by
the Irish Economist Philip Pilkington
and he tried to answer this question and
he analyzed what would be the effects on
the US economy of the end of the
exorbitant privilege of the US dollar
and he found that it would result likely
in a decline in the average daily income
in the US of between 27% and 50
7% and he estimated that a decline of
27% would be more likely this would mean
a massive fall in living standards and
the US would no longer be able to
maintain such a massive trade deficit
with the rest of the world such a huge
current account deficit it means that
there would be more inflation it means
that Imports would be more expensive and
in particular the point I want to
emphasize today is it would mean that
wealthy investors who have invested so
much in Assets in the United States
would see a huge blow to their wealth
that is to say the people who would hurt
the most from the end of the exorbitant
privilege of the US dollar is the global
1% the 1% of capitalist oligarchs in the
US but also the 1% of wealthy oligarchs
around the world who have invested so
much of their wealth in US assets and
for decades since the rise of
neoliberalism in the 1980s the US
government’s policy has been to inflate
asset prices at the expense of
manufacturing this resulted in severe
de-industrialization in the United
States and the loss of many good
manufacturing jobs many of which were
unionized and at the same time the
global 1% which hold many of their
Assets in US dollar Assets in the US
they have gotten very very wealthy in
fact you can see some of the effects of
this in this study that was published by
The Economist Philip Pilkington it is
titled reindustrialization in the age of
fragmentation it is a fascinating report
and I’m going to go through some of the
main findings of it today and for people
who don’t know I should point out that
philli is the co-host of a very
interesting podcast called the
multipolarity podcast and I sometimes
disagree with them politically but I
think they have very interesting
analysis and it’s definitely worth
checking out and as you can see in this
study Philip is quite a good Economist
and I think he has a very unique
perspective he’s very critical of the
neoliberal financialization policies
that have de-industrialized much of the
West and you can see that in the results
of his study now in the appendix of this
report which I’m going to look at before
going to the rest of the study he talks
about what the United States would look
like after the decline of the global
dollar and he points out that the United
States is an extreme outlier when it
comes to the relationship between its
current account deficit and its income
level most countries in the world that
have significant current account
deficits tend to have lower income
levels but the US stands out as an
extreme outlier due to the unique status
of the American dollar as the global
Reserve currency you can visualize this
if you look at World Bank data on the
current account balances of countries
around the world and for people who
don’t know the current account is a way
to measure the balance of payments of a
country the way it trades with the rest
of the world and essentially if a
country has a current account Surplus it
means that it exports significantly more
than it Imports and if a country has a
current account deficit it means that it
Imports much more than it exports so
it’s a way of measuring a country’s
trade deficit or Surplus with the entire
world because a country can have a trade
surplus with another country but still
have an overall current account deficit
with the rest of the world and if you
look at this data you can see that the
countries that have the largest current
account deficits in nominal terms in
dollar terms are the wealthy
anglo-american countries in particular
the United States and the United Kingdom
and you can see that in
2022 the US current account deficit was
971
billion doar that is about $1
trillion and the United Kingdom’s
current account deficit was about $100
billion and in the World Bank data the
countries that are in light blue have a
current account deficit and the
countries that are in dark blue have a
current account Surplus and you can see
the countries that are industrial
superpowers that significantly rely on
exports like for inance
China also Germany Japan they tend to
have very large current account
surpluses and also Petro states
countries that export a lot of oil and
gas or other important natural resources
or minerals also tend to have pretty
large current account surpluses like
Russia or Saudi Arabia for instance
however that data was simply looking at
the current account balance in nominal
terms in dollar terms if you look at
current account balances as a percentage
of GDP you can start seeing this this
pattern more clearly where the countries
that have a significant industrial base
and Export a lot of machines and capital
goods tend to have current account
surpluses and also Petro states
countries that export a lot of raw
materials have current account surpluses
and in general poor countries tend to
have current account deficits because
many poor developing countries do not
have a significant developed industrial
base and they rely on importing things
like machines technology capital goods
medicines and instead they export only
low value added products and maybe some
raw materials so in general the more
advanced rich countries tend to have a
higher current account Surplus or more
of a balance whereas poor countries tend
to overall have more of a current
account deficit except for one huge
exception being the United States which
in
2022 had a current account deficit of 4%
of GDP compared to for instance Germany
which had a current account surplus of
4% of GDP and this is even clearer if
you look at the data over years this map
shows the current account balance of
countries around the world between 1980
and 2008 and you can see that there is
one country that is dark red on this map
because it has by far the largest
current account deficit in the entire
world and that is the United States
whereas countries with large
manufacturing sectors especially China
Japan Germany they are some of the
darkest green on this map with some of
the largest current account surpluses
because they are the factories of the
world exporting significantly more than
they import
now for people who don’t know much about
economics I want to briefly explain this
point because it’s very important
countries that tend to maintain a
current account deficit over time often
have a decline in living standards
because they tend to have a falling
exchange rate what does that mean it
means that a country that Imports much
more than it exports has to find a way
to finance that difference right because
if a country is paying for all of these
Imports where is the money going to come
from in to pay for those Imports well
workers can produce products and they
can have exports and then when they
export products they will get access to
foreign currencies which they can use to
pay for their Imports however if a
country does not have enough of those
foreign currencies to pay for the
Imports and they have a current account
deficit what happens is that over time
their currency will fall in value
against the value of the currency that
is used to pay for their Imports which
by the way tends to be the dollar so
poor countries in the global South that
tend to have current account deficits
because they don’t have much industry
their currencies often fall against the
dollar and that means that the
purchasing power of workers who are paid
in the local currency Falls that means
that these workers can no longer buy
imports so Imports decrease and over
time theoretically at least on paper the
balance of trade will become more
balanced and the current account deficit
will disappear however what actually
happens is that countries take on debt
in order to maintain those Imports and
one of the ways in which governments
will fund that debt is by selling
sovereign debt in the form of bonds or
the international monetary fund will
step in and they will help a country by
providing them this debt that they use
this loan in order to fund their balance
of payments but of course they have to
do so in return for imposing you know
structural adjustment policies which are
demanded by the IMF now the reason that
the US does not have to do that the IMF
is is never going to tell the US to
balance its balance of payments and stop
importing so much the the IMF is never
going to impose conditionalities and
structural adjustment on the US because
the US dollar is the global Reserve
currency so this means that most
countries poor countries in the global
South the living standards of work ERS
fall because they can no longer pay for
their Imports so their currencies
devalue against the dollar but the US is
buying its Imports with its own currency
if if the US wants to buy foreign cars
or oil or whatever technology they want
now then the US can simply print those
dollars in order to import those
products and then the US exports
inflation to the rest of the world this
is the exorbitant privilege of the US
dollar and in his report Philip
Pilkington tried to answer the question
what would the US economy look like in a
world where the US dollar is no longer
the global Reserve currency and he found
that it would result in living standards
in the US that is average daily income
falling to an equilibrium level of about
57% and that is a massive decline
however he points out that wealthier
countries are often better able to
sustain higher living standards than
poor countries relative to their current
account balance so in reality he
estimated that it would probably look
like a decline of living standards of
around
27% so between 27 and
57% what this shows is that the US
economy is living on the wealth produced
by other economies around the world and
the US economy sucks in that wealth in
the form of foreign investments which
are used to fund its current account
deficit however at the same time I think
there’s a very important detail in here
which is the role of financialization in
the US economy and how looking simply at
a decline in the average daily income of
Americans I think is not the best way to
understand this because we should
understand how yes the end to the
exorbitant privilege of the US dollar
will have an impact on average people in
the US but actually what we’re going to
see is different impacts on different
people in the US and the people who will
be hurt the most from the end of the
exorbitant privilege of the US dollar
are not poor and working class Americans
but the richest Americans and also rich
people around the world the global 1%
who hold much of their wealth in the
form of US dollar denominated assets
because the reality is that the
financialization of the US economy and
the de-industrialization of the US
economy and the role of the US dollar as
the global Reserve currency has not
benefited most average working people
instead it has benefited a small handful
of capitalist oligarchs and this is why
the issue of industrialization is so
important because if you look when the
US in the neoliberal era in the 1980s
when it began to
de-industrialized it’s not a coincidence
that that’s the same moment
at which the US current account balance
began to Skyrocket so in the 1970s the
US current account balance was
around balanced it was about
0% of GDP pretty balanced but by the
1980s in 1987 it fell to 3% of GDP and
then in the 1990s it plummeted and by
2006 it reached 6% of GDP this is of
course right before the the Great
Recession in the United States the the
major financial crisis which this is
Peak globalization Peak neoliberal
globalization and in this era from the
1980s until the 2000s
2010s many manufacturing jobs in the
United States were exported abroad they
were this was the era of Outsourcing and
instead the US economy increasingly
financialized
this chart shows how in the neoliberal
era of globalization and free market
fundamentalism there was a bifurcation
and you can see it very clearly in the
average compensation in the
non-financial sector and in the
financial sector and wages for
non-financial workers in the US were
completely stagnant since the beginning
of the financialized neoliberal era and
instead in the financial sector
compensation skyrocketed and this chart
by the way comes from the US
government’s inquiry its official
commission report on the 2008 2009
financial crisis and it’s a very clear
example of the adverse effect the
negative effects of this neoliberal
financialization policy along with
de-industrialization here is another
chart showing how starting in the 1980s
there was this bifurcation and the US
economy moved much more more toward the
service sector and away from goods and
construction away from manufacturing and
basically the idea was that the US
doesn’t need to produce anything instead
us companies can Outsource their
manufacturing to low wage countries in
the global South and they can pay
foreign workers much less and then
export those goods to the United States
and instead the US economy would be
based much more on services and in
particular in the financial sector and
the idea was essentially that all forms
of economic activity and economic growth
are equally Val valuable it doesn’t
matter that there is less Manufacturing
in the US so this brings us back to the
issue of the US current account deficit
and helps us to answer the question as
to why the US has been able to maintain
such a massive current account deficit
over decades it makes more sense when
you realize that the inverse of the the
current account is the capital account
the capital account is the way to
measure the flow of investment into and
out of a country and you can see that as
the US maintained this trade deficit
with the rest of the world the US began
exporting dollars it flooded the world
with dollars and what happened those
dollars were invested in Assets in the
United States now it also led to the
creation of offshore dollar accounts in
Europe which are known as Euro dollars
and other countries as well but that’s a
completely different point what we’re
looking at here from the Federal Reserve
data is the massive increase in foreign
investment in US assets which are the
inverse of the US trade deficit with the
rest of the world you can see that in
the 1960s and70s it was basically
balanced if anything there was actually
a capital account deficit but in the
neoliberal ERA with the lifting of
capital controls allowing Capital to
move freely all around the world and
with the end of the pegging of the US
dollar to gold and with Outsourcing of
manufacturing jobs and
de-industrialization the global 1%
capitalists around the world begin to
invest more and more of their wealth in
US assets which is what was funding the
United States and helping it to maintain
its current account deficit you can see
that this especially clearly if you look
at the size of the US Stock Market as an
percentage of the overall World stock
market now in
1899 the US represented a little under
15% of the world stock market the UK
made up
24% as of
2024 the us alone represents nearly
61% of the entire world stock market
this is according to D that was
published by the Swiss bank UBS in its
Global investment returns yearbook for
2024 and you can see that no other
country comes even remotely close Japan
comes in second place with 6% of the
size of the entire world stock market
the US is 10 times larger what this
shows is that not only capitalists in
the US but capitalists around the world
hold much of their wealth in the form of
us equities and of also of course us
real estate and US bonds US Government
debt it was famously The Economist
Michael Hudson who explained how this
system works back in the 1970s in his
book super imperialism the economic
strategy of American Empire and Michael
published an updated Third Edition of
his book back in 20121 he explained how
the US was able to maintain this current
account deficit by forcing other
countries to invest in US Treasury
Securities especially us allies like
Japan and South Korea that have been
militarily occupied by the us since in
the case of Japan 19 the 1940s and in
the case of South Korea since the 1950s
so essentially these countries were
paying the US to maintain its military
occupation of them and furthermore other
countries around the world began holding
large sums of US Treasury Securities US
debt because also the US dollar is the
global Reserve currency and also because
of the Petro dollar system that the US
helped to create in the 1970s by
pressuring Saudi Arabia to price its oil
and dollars and pressuring other oil
producers to price their oil in dollars
and this means that if you hold treasury
Securities it’s also like holding oil
essentially so after US president
Richard Nixon ended the convertibility
of the dollar into gold in
1971 the way that the US was able to
finance its increasing current account
deficit is through this increasing debt
that it has with the rest of the world
that is financed by Foreign investors in
the case of central banks but also in
the case of wealthy capitalists holding
their wealth in the form of US dollar
denominated assets and the policy of the
US government has essentially been to
inflate the value of these assets
especially the stock market you can see
the massive asset price inflation during
the quantitative easing in which the
Federal Reserve essentially printed
money and used it to buy Securities and
inflate the value of assets and the
stock exchange in the US the the major
top 500 companies in the stock exchange
saw their stock prices massively
increase by more than
400% between 2009 and 2019 and there was
also a very significant increase in the
value of real estate in the US which
grew significantly faster than wages in
the US so what this shows is that the US
government’s policy was no longer about
serving the interests of working people
instead the US government was dedicated
to protecting the wealth of the global
1% of capitalists in the US and
capitalists around the world inflating
their assets while at the same time the
cost of living became more and more
expensive for average Working Class
People in the US this is why I
emphasized earlier that the end of the
exorbitant privilege of the US dollar
does not necessarily mean that working
people in the US will suddenly all
become extremely poor because in reality
the exorbitant privilege of the US
dollar was used to maintain the wealth
of the global capitalist class not the
wealth of average working people and at
the same time we should keep in mind
that this inflation of asset prices in
the US on behalf of the global 1% also
meant that the US was unable to compete
in terms of its industry because the
cost of living became so prohibitively
expensive especially with the
privatization of education and health
care and transportation this meant that
it became extremely expensive
for manufacturing production in the US
so as dollarization happens as the US
loses the exorbitant privilege of the
dollar it also makes it easier for in
reindustrialization in the US it makes
it easier to bring back manufacturing
jobs which also by the way tend to be
much better highquality jobs for working
people and by the way many of those
manufacturing jobs will be unionized
unions tend to be much stronger when it
comes to factory manufacturing work and
it’s not a coincidence that when the US
de-industrialized in the 1980s and 90s
part of that was motivated by these us
multinational corporations wanting to
break the back of unions which were very
strong up until that period and this
brings me back to the report that was
published by The Economist Philip
Pilkington because I want to look at a
few other details which are related to
this Philip correctly points out that
the de-industrialization in the US and
the West more broadly coincided with the
rise of a so-called post-industrial
economy and
financialization with the so-called new
economy boom of the 1990s he doesn’t use
the term neoliberalism but this is what
we’re talking about free market
fundamentalism the idea that all forms
of economic activity are the same that
speculating on financial assets is just
as important as manufacturing cars and
you know building infrastructure and
Philip correctly points out that this
rampant financialization led to the
inflation of financial bubbles in the US
for instance in 2000 there was the dot
bubble and in 2008 there was the popping
of the housing and mortgage bubble and
the Great Recession this report notes
that this led to the economic
abandonment of formal industrial regions
like for instance the steel belt and the
Rust Belt in the United States or also
Northern England was another
de-industrialized area and with the rise
of free market economics with neoliberal
Dogma being embraced by both Democrats
and Republicans there was a significant
loss of highly paid manufacturing jobs
now Phil P Pilkington doesn’t point out
that many of those jobs were in were
unionized and one of the reasons they
were so highly paid is because they were
unionized and that us companies were
trying to break the back of unions but
it’s it’s a very important point and I’m
glad to see that he is drawing together
the financialization and the
de-industrialization because these two
phenomena are direct mirrors of each
other and Pilkington has a chart in here
that shows manufacturing employment as a
percentage of all jobs in the US and you
can see that there was a big increase
during World War II it reached nearly
40% and in the 19 50s manufacturing jobs
were more than 30% of all of the jobs in
the US but there was a significant
Decline and by the 2010s it stagnated
and today manufacturing jobs only
represent around 8% of total jobs in the
US and now the US is trying to bring
back some of those manufacturing jobs
but it’s not just the US with the rise
of neoliberalism Market fundamentalism
across the West you can see that there
is a general decline in manufacturing
output in the west and at the same time
you see an increase in manufacturing
production in the bricks countries and
especially China being the largest
economy in the bricks the largest
economy in the world and also the
world’s industrial superpower now I
should point out that in his report
Pilkington included Japan and South
Korea in the West the collective West
grouping and that makes sense
politically of course although when you
include Japan and South Korea in the
data it actually makes the
de-industrialization look less bad
because in reality compared to Europe
and the US Japan and South Korea have
not de-industrialized Japan and South
Korea are still major industrial Powers
so you should keep this in mind when
we’re looking at the data here that
Japan and South Korea are actually
helping the West in this data now also
coinciding with de-industrialization in
the West Was a decline in investment and
economists measure investment by looking
at gross fixed Capital formation and if
you look at gross fixed Capital
formation as a percentage of GDP you can
see that the countries that are major
industrial powers like China and also
South Korea still have very high
investment rates in the case of china it
is nearly 45% of G GDP in South Korea it
is over 30% of GDP but in the US and the
UK the you know neoliberal financialized
economies in the US it’s just over 20%
and in the UK it is under 20% of GDP so
there was a massive decline in
investment and of course you need
investment in order to fund more
industrial production and
reindustrialize what’s also very
interesting about this study is that
Pilkington looked at foreign direct
invest investment FDI as a percentage of
GDP and he shows that actually there’s
not really a correlation between
manufacturing high levels of
manufacturing as a percentage of GDP and
FDI as a percentage of GDP in fact
China’s FDI as a percentage of GDP is
very low it’s at basically the same
level as the US and it’s lower than the
UK’s but obviously the US and the UK
have significantly de-industrialized
whereas China continues to industrialize
so Pilkington points out that this data
shows that developing countries mainly
rely for their Capital development on
internal capital accumulation whereas
Western countries typically seek out a
combination of domestic and foreign
Capital to build out their Capital stock
so FDI is not as important for the
bricks countries as it is for many of
the Western countries and of course this
is looking at data from 2017 until 2022
there was a period especially in the
’90s and 2000s in which FDI was more
important for China’s economy but today
FDI is not very important for China’s
economy and you should keep this in mind
when Western media Outlets try to
portray China as being an economic
crisis because FDI has declined ignoring
the fact that the vast majority of
investment is domestic not foreign in
fact Pilkington pointed out in his
report that it is foreign investors who
stand to the most to gain out of
investment in rapidly growing emerging
economies not the economies themselves
many of which seem able to grow without
FDI inflows and he pointed out that the
relationship between average income and
FDI is very weak he shows that the data
according to the data average income
does not correlate with foreign direct
investment and we people might think
that the main driver of FDI is low labor
costs but the data shows that other
factors must override this consideration
low labor costs alone are not enough to
attract foreign foreign direct
investment and high labor costs are not
enough to repel FDI and this is often
pointed out by economists if the only
thing that you needed to attract foreign
direct investment was low wages then the
poorest countries in the world you know
in subsaharan Africa would have tons of
FDI but obviously there are other
considerations like infrastructure
industrialization uh human capital
development so the point is is that this
idea that developing countries need to
attract foreign capital from foreign
investors in order to develop is simply
not the case in the case of china FDI
did play a role in technology transfer
but it was not the main factor in
China’s Economic Development and today
it is not the main factor in development
in the bricks countries and in much of
the global South the vast majority of
investment in these countries is
domestic not foreign and by the way in
regard to this idea that having low
wages means that a country is going to
have better manufacturing well what’s
interesting about pilkington’s report is
he finds that average daily income Bears
no relationship to manufacturing as a
percentage of GDP so that means that
having a low-wage economy is neither a
necessary nor a sufficient condition for
having a large manufacturing component
in a country’s economy there is however
a consistent relationship in both
Western economies and in the bricks
countries between running a current
account Surplus and H having a higher
average daily income so this is simply
explaining the data we looked at earlier
which shows that many poor countries
developing countries in the global South
have current account deficits whereas
some rich countries disproportionately
tend to have current account surpluses
but of course as we’re talking about
today the main exception is the US and
that’s because of the exorbitant
privilege of the US dollar Pilkington
says this in his report noting that
having a globally competitive economy
that can run a trade surplus gives rise
to higher living standards however the
situation of the United States is an
outlier
the US may have too high an average
income relative to its International
competitiveness and that is an effect of
the US dollar being the global Reserve
currency if the dollar were ever to lose
its Reserve currency status the US may
see a substantial contraction in living
standards this of course is the main
point of the analysis today that I began
this episode with and I think it’s the
most interesting finding in Pilkington
study although it’s not the only one
this is a very fascinating report and as
I wrap up Pilkington concluded his study
pointing out that a small but vocal
minority of economists and politicians
have warned about the dangers of
de-industrialization for decades but
were not taken seriously by the
political Elite and that’s of course
because they profited from the
financialization of the US economy and
not just the US political Elite but
around the world Elites profited from
that from investing in US dollar
denomination assets however the Silver
Lining that he points out in this study
which again the study was actually not
dedicated to studying the exorbitant
privilege of the dollar that was
actually kind of a side side effect of
this report what it was dedicated to is
looking at the effects of
de-industrialization and how Western
countries can reindustrialize and
whether or not high incomes have an
impact on
industrialization and he pointed out
that high labor costs are not impossible
to marry with high levels of investment
in industrialization as countries like
Japan and Germany have shown but at the
same time they likely do not make
industrialization any easier and Western
countries that have lower wages have an
advantage in the reindustrialization
drive however he points out that it is
possible to reindustrialize that
governments have to encourage higher
rates of investment and this is I think
the money quote there needs to be a
concerted effort on the part of
government to channel savings into
productive investment rather than
blowing bubbles in the financial markets
this is such an important point and this
is exactly getting back to the issue
that I’ve been speaking about today
which is that US government policy since
the rise of neoliberalism in the 198s
has not been to encourage productive
investment in the real economy instead
the US government’s goal has been to
inflate the value of assets held by the
global 1% by capitalists in the US and
around the world and has done so at the
expense of the industrial sector and
good highquality manufacturing jobs in
the US and this is why the end of the
exorbitant privilege of the US dollar
can be good for working people around
the world in the US and other countries
it is the global capitalist class
oligarchs worldwide the world global 1%
who have benefited from the exorbitant
privilege of the US dollar and this is
why dollarization is so important not
only for developing countries that want
to have to want they want to increase
the living standards of their own
workers and want to have a greater share
in global Prosperity they of course are
the main beneficiaries of dollarization
and that’s why it’s so important for
them to find alternatives to the dollar
but also I think it’s true that could be
benefits for working people in the US
this is why everyone should support
dollarization and it’s also why I spend
so much time and energy reporting on
this issue I think dollarization is one
of the most important developments in
global politics and economics today and
on that note I’m going to conclude I am
Ben Norton the editor-in-chief of
geopolitical economy report I want to
thank everyone for joining me today
please like And subscribe oh and by the
way
I in in the description below I have
linked to Philip pilkington’s very
interesting report you can find that
link below and read the study for
yourself on that note I’m going to
conclude I’ll see you all next time

How much does the US benefit from printing the global reserve currency? An economist calculated that US average daily income would fall by 27-57% if the dollar lost its “exorbitant privilege”. Ben Norton explains how wealthy investors not only in North America but around the world hold much of their wealth in the dollar.

Link to Philip Pilkington’s report and Twitter account: https://twitter.com/philippilk/status/1782409654519128497

Topics
0:00 US dollar dominance
2:00 Economics of exorbitant privilege
5:23 Current account
9:29 Balance of payments
12:31 Effects of dollar hegemony
14:45 Neoliberalism & financialization
17:41 Foreign capital funds US deficits
19:28 Global 1% invests in US assets
20:35 Super Imperialism
22:25 Fed inflates asset bubbles
25:22 De-industrialization in West
28:06 Industrialization in BRICS
28:57 Investment & FDI
33:08 Wages & manufacturing
35:00 Re-industrialization?
38:16 Outro

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