Even as I write this, China and Russia are holding talks with India and Brazil over creating a new international currency standard, one which doesn't involve the US dollar. This conference is deemed so important to the Iranians that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad remains in attendance despite his nation fracturing over what looks increasingly like a stolen election to keep him in power.
These nations are described by a Russian businessman as "feel[ing] themselves excluded from the global system, who feel victimized by the US-dominated unipolar order... [now] being shaken to its foundations by economic crisis and imperial retreat..." Without clear leadership from the US, these nations are seeking to establish a new basis for international economic stability, and the US just isn't trusted anymore to provide that service. Even OPEC nations have been paying close attention to the developments for a while now.
US observers remain smugly behind the bold assertion that the US dollar isn't going to be replaced any time soon, but they miss the point of this BRIC currency meeting entirely. Of course for the time being there is no alternative to the dollar as the world's reserve currency! Russian President Dmitry Medvedev even admitted as much at the conference. But countries which are accustomed to thinking longer-term than the next business quarter understand that forming a replacement is going to take time, years even. The fact that these nations are now meeting should indicate that they feel the time to act has arrived.
Acting doesn’t mean wildly thrashing about, such as indicated by Obama’s throwing money at Wall Street and hoping to patch the leaks in the banks while towing Main Street’s GM jobs to the junkyard. It means carefully examining both the problem and the options for solving that problem so as to avoid making the existing problems worse. Instantly-gratified Americans don’t understand this process anymore, which explains why our US observer sees the forest only as more trees to be profitably cut down.
This misguided author isn't alone. Conservative columnist and author Kevin Phillips predicts that such willful ignorance is going to be seen by history as the means by which Asia rose to dominance of the world. "Both Americans and foreigners concerned about the incendiary potential of inflation and the devaluation of the dollar have good historical reason for concern," he concludes, aiding support for the purpose of the BRIC nations' conference.
Article comments
1 - Baronius
I hate to comment on an article without having read it, but Kevin Phillips is not a conservative.
2 - Dave Nalle
When did Realist claim that he was?
Dave
3 - Dave Nalle
NM, apparently you read the article more closely than I did. He does actually make that claim. Not surprising. Realist's grip on conservatism is highly subjective.
Dave
4 - Dave Nalle
There's also an old saying that "one should dance with the one which brung ya", and Obama has yet to lift his lame ass off the chair.
Again, wrong, Realist. Obama IS dancing with the ones who brung him. Specifically the unions and the democratic power brokers who put him in office. He doesn't see LGBT voters as significant enough to be worth paying off.
Dave
5 - Realist
Dave, in the interest of your own safety, I wouldn't make the suggestion that Obama is dancing with the unions to any Texas UAW local member - I hear Texans like to answer unpleasant insults with violence.