Rude Awakening for the US in January? No, Just More Alarmist BS From Rickards

Really? Let’s investigate.

Dear President Trump,
Over the last couple of years I’ve been all over TV… from Fox News to CNBC, CNN and Bloomberg. I’ve been telling our fellow Americans that the financial global elite was planning to issue their own globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs.
And that those elites would use this new currency to replace the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency.

Let’s stop right there for a second to take a peek at the IMF SDR Fact Sheet.

The SDR is an international reserve asset, created by the IMF in 1969 to supplement its member countries’ official reserves.

As of March 2016, 204.1 billion SDRs (equivalent to about $285 billion) had been created and allocated to members. SDRs can be exchanged for freely usable currencies.

The value of the SDR is based on a basket of five major currencies—the US dollar, the euro, the Chinese renminbi (RMB), the Japanese yen, and the British pound sterling.

In his letter to President Trump, Rickards warns everyone that the “financial global elite plan to issue their own globalist currency called special drawing rights, or SDRs”, an event that actually happened about 48 years ago.

Total US Dollar Debt Owed vs SDRs

The total amount of SDR’s is a pissy $285 billion as of April 21, 2017.

Total Credit Market Debt Owed was 65.5 trillion in March of 2016. The Fed has since stopped publishing the number.

That is what Rickards proposes will cause a crash. The actual number is even smaller if one factors in Euro-denominated debt, Yuan-denominated debt, and Japanese-denominated debt.

The idea behind SDRs is to reduce currency fluctuations. IMF borrowers (countries like Greece) convert SDRs into their currency of choice (in the case of Greece, that would be Euros).

Investopedia notes: “SDRs are used by the IMF to make emergency loans and are used by developing nations to shore up their currency reserves without the need to borrow at high interest rates or run current account surpluses.”

The respective weights of the US dollar, euro, Chinese renminbi, Japanese yen, and British pound sterling are 41.73 percent, 30.93 percent, 10.92 percent, 8.33 percent, and 8.09 percent. These weights were used to determine the amounts of each of the five currencies included in the new SDR valuation basket that took effect on October 1, 2016.

Trade does not really take place in SDRs. In fact, Investopedia stated the IMF discourages countries from pegging their currencies to SDRs, the opposite of what Rickards suggests.

With that background out of the way, let’s return to to the alarmist nonsense from Rickards.

Alarmist Nonsense

Make no mistake, if the IMF is planning to use Distributed Ledgers to replace the U.S. dollar with SDRs. And just to be clear, when SDRs take over, the American people will be left with devalued dollars.

Once other nations start accumulating the globalist currency through Distributed Ledgers, they will no longer need to hold dollars. Once Distributed Ledgers go live, other nations will no longer need to buy Treasury bonds.

And that means our government — your government — will no longer be able to finance its normal operations, including welfare programs like Social Security. For those who have their retirement account parked in stocks, they could watch it evaporate in a matter of days. The weakest companies in the stock market could collapse once this plan goes live.

Function of Math

No one forces China, Japan, or anyone else to hold dollars. That other countries accumulate US dollars is a function of math.

The US runs a trade deficit, other nations must accumulate US assets (typically treasuries because they pay interest).

Piling Nonsense Upon Nonsense

The transition from a U.S. dollar system to a new system dominated by SDRs will be messy. Stocks will collapse… and will stay down. There will be no recovery this time, because the U.S. government won’t be able to come to the rescue like they did in 2008.

In a special report dated June 2017, the IMF had this to say about Distributed Ledgers: The IMF favors control by a “pre-selected group of participants” or “one organization,” rather than allowing “anyone” to participate.

This paper should be viewed as the first step in the IMF’s plan to migrate its existing form of world money, the SDR, onto a DLT platform controlled by the IMF.

They’re telling you exactly what their plan is. It would be foolish to ignore them, or assume the U.S. dollar will remain the global reserve currency much longer once this plan is implemented, as early as January 1, 2018.

You know the global elites’ aren’t your biggest fan. You know the U.S. dollar has been under attack.

This is the global financial elites’ plan to remove the U.S. dollar from its position of power and to attack your administration all at once.

Who do you think American’s will blame when the stock market crashes, or Social Security runs out? We can hear the talking heads already.

Jim Rickards

for The Daily Reckoning

That alarmist conclusion was of course followed by a chance to get a “free groundbreaking publication” whose only intent is to get you to buy something.

Rickards is pissing and moaning about a trivial amount of SDRs that the IMF loans to developing countries and global basket cases like Greece.

Even if the IMF does something in January of 2018 with distributed ledgers, it will be as meaningless as the IMF’s original implementation of SDRs 48 years ago.

Perhaps there is a “rude awakening” in January, but SDRs will not have anything to do with it.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock