''CURRENCY CARTEL: Counterfeiting "Risk Free"

From GoldSeek

''An 'expiring' Petro$$ Strategy, a shift by central banks of the emerging countries to buying gold and the shrinking of the US as a trade and industrial power, have shifted the foundation of the US$ as the global reserve currency.

Nothing is going to happen tomorrow! It is likely, as things worsen due to the problems of unsound money and fiat currencies, that the US will be the last currency to fall.

The problem now is the inevitability of a fiat system failure, and when it does, that it will fail catastrophically with unimaginable and protracted consequences. The path we are on leaves few solutions other than accelerated money printing, which is exactly what we are witnessing with.''

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''The European Central Bank Revisits Triffin''

From The Gold Standard Now
By Ralph J Benko

''Belgian economist Robert Triffin was, along with Jacques Rueff, one of the chief critics of the use of the dollar as an international reserve currency.  Triffin and Rueff agreed in their diagnosis of the inherent defects; their remedy differed.  Triffin posited the resolution in a supranational reserve currency.  Rueff called for the restoration of the classical gold standard.''

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''Global Reserve Currencies, the Triffin dilemma and gold's role''

From MineWeb
By Richard Mills

''Today no country is on a gold standard and all currencies are fiat. If a future fiat global currency were to be put in place without full, or at least a hefty partial gold backing, then we'd simply be repeating Bretton Woods - the 1944 US dollar failed reserve currency experiment - except it'd be on a much grander scale.''

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"China, the dollar, and the return of the Triffin dilemma"

From Gold  Standard Now

''What is at the core of the monetary tension between the United States and China?

Director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations Benn Steil, co-author of Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (Yale University Press, 2009), perceptively observes:

China’s position on imbalances is also the same as the US position at Bretton Woods: the debtor should bear the burden of adjustment. In the present context, that means tighter US monetary and fiscal policy, as would be required under a classical gold standard (that is, the United States sends a dollar to China, China redeems it for gold, US gold stocks fall, policy tightens to draw gold back, imbalances fall). But now that the United States is a massive debtor, rather than the creditor it was at Bretton Woods, it rejects the logic of debtor adjustment.''

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''Global imbalances and the Triffin dilemma''

they hate us for our currency................From Reuters
By John Kemp

THE TRIFFIN DILEMMA

''This paradox linked to the provision of the world’s reserve currency was first noted by Yale economist Robert Triffin. In a famous warning to Congress in 1960, Triffin explained that as the marginal supplier of the world’s reserve currency the United States had no choice but to run persistent current account deficits.

As the global economy expanded, demand for reserve assets increased. These could only be supplied to foreigners by America running a current account deficit and issuing dollar-denominated obligations to fund it. If the United States stopped running balance of payments deficits and supplying reserves, the resulting shortage of liquidity would pull the global economy into a contractionary spiral.''

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ZeroHedge Guest Post: ''Gold And Triffin's Dilemma''

From ZeroHedge

''The obscure Belgian economist Robert Triffin is not only very dead he also isn't exactly a household name, yet. Triffin, who died in 1993 studied at Harvard, taught at Yale, worked at the Federal Reserve, the IMF, and was a key contributor to the formation of the European monetary system. Triffin exposed serious flaws in the Bretton Woods monetary system and perfectly predicted it's inevitable demise yet his work remains largely ignored and unstudied by today's mainstream economists. This "flaw" became known as the Triffin dilemma, and many believe Triffin's dilemma has as serious implications today as it did 50 years ago. In short, Triffin proposed that when one nations currency also becomes the worlds reserve asset, eventually domestic and international monetary objectives diverge. Have you ever wondered how it's possible that the USA has run a trade deficit for 37 consecutive years? Have you ever considered the consequences on the value of your Dollar denominated assets if it eventually becomes an unacceptable form of payment to our trading partners? Thankfully for those of us trying to navigate the current financial morass, Robert Triffin did.''

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''The Reserve Fiat Currency Triffin Dilemma Will Create a 3-G World''

From Market Oracle
Richard Mills

''By "agreeing" to have its currency used as a reserve currency, a country pins its hands behind its back. In order to keep the global economy chugging along, it may have to inject large amounts of currency into circulation, driving up inflation at home. The more popular the reserve currency is relative to other currencies, the higher its exchange rate and the less competitive domestic exporting industries become. This causes a trade deficit for the currency-issuing country, but makes the world happy. If the reserve currency country instead decides to focus on domestic monetary policy by not issuing more currency then the world is unhappy.

Becoming a reserve currency presents countries with a paradox. They want the "interest-free" loan generated by selling currency to foreign governments, and the ability to raise capital quickly, because of high demand for reserve currency-denominated bonds. At the same time they want to be able to use capital and monetary policy to ensure that domestic industries are competitive in the world market, and to make sure that the domestic economy is healthy and not running large trade deficits.

Unfortunately, both of these ideas - cheap sources of capital and positive trade balances - can't really happen at the same time.''

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''A Replacement for the Dollar System''

From goldnews.bullionvault

''Rickards reckons the IMF (international Monetary Fund) could come in and produce SDRs, or special drawing rights. SDRs are effectively a unit of account defined by the value of a basket of currencies: the US Dollar, the Euro, the British pound, and the Japanese yen.

These SDR's could replace the international reserve role of the US Dollar and in part solve Triffin's Dilemma. But is issuing a piece of paper, backed by other pieces of paper and managed by a bunch of policymakers, a better system than the one we've got? Are SDRs relevant if it's the 'old' industrial, debt-soaked powers who ultimately stand behind them?

Probably not. But the elites who run the system are from the old, debt soaked industrial powers, and they'll do anything to keep their hold on power. This is why having SDR's as a reserve currency is probably more realistic than you may think.''

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