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The depth of the U.S. securities market helps ensure dollar hegemony

1. The Ukraine Crisis and Dollar Supremacy

Since the collapse of communism in the early 1990s and the subsequent rise of the world economy as a single market-based operational totality, its monetary counterpart has been a unipolar currency system centered on the US dollar as the premier vehicle currency in the private sector, as well as the premier reserve currency in the official sector. The hegemony of the dollar has survived several global economic shocks, including that of the financial crisis of 2007-9. Whether the system can survive the seismic shocks stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is now under active debate.

I thank Philos Lysandrou and Anastasia Nesvetailova for their response to my essay on the dollar in a multi-polar world. Our conclusions are broadly similar, though a reader of the Lysandrou/Nesvetailova essay alone might be forgiven for thinking that sharp differences exist.

For instance, L/N characterize my view in these words: “He sees the confidence in the dollar as something highly fragile because it apparently lacks any material substance to back it.” I searched my text for the words “fragile” and “fragility.” They were not to be found. On the contrary, L/N quote the following passage but omit both a crucial intermediate sentence and also the conclusion, which are included in bold below:

Frank McCourt discusses his work to reinspire hope in the American experiment, and to build the framework necessary for that better tomorrow.

Last week’s WTO 12^th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in Geneva concluded with pro-corporate, anti-worker, and anti-development outcomes on all major issues of access to medicines, agriculture, digital trade, and the future of the WTO itself. The spin of “unprecedented outcomes” of MC12 is a cynical ploy to paper over major differences to bolster the institution’s flailing reputation.

The agreements should herald a warning to all: rich country governments professing new commitments to sustainable and worker-centered trade are just as likely to push anti-development outcomes and cosmetic window-dressing when it comes to protecting Big Business profits above the public interest. Their version of WTO “reform” will facilitate the further deterioration of multilateralism and cement-in discredited pro-corporate rules on globalization.

MC12: Setting the Scenario

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In 1972, the government drew up plans to construct a deportation facility off the coast of Ireland that could house as many as 70 million people - the entire population of the UK, if need be. The intention was to make it an exact replica of the United Kingdom and call it Bad Kingdom.

Bad Match movie poster

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Economics presents itself as a rational science dealing with objective measures and quantitative approaches, but astute observers have long recognized its suffusion with magical, fantastic, irrational, and unconscious elements. That makes it fertile ground for those who study human psychology.

Contemporary discussions of economics and psychology focus mostly on behavioral economics, while psychoanalysis, the branch ostensibly dedicated to heightening awareness of the unconscious, has made far fewer appearances in the conversation. More than half a century ago, thinkers like Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse gained wide appeal with their dives into the hidden recesses and unconscious motivations of economics, but as Sigmund Freud began to fall out of favor with academics in the 1960s, psychoanalytic approaches have been pushed aside or rebranded – despite the fact that a great deal of recent scientific research supports Freud’s concept of the unconscious.

Michael Greenberg's INET working paper on derivatives regulation is featured in Salon

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How can we develop a deeper, more human and multifaceted understanding of the past?

Recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, Tulsa, and more have left scores dead from sickening gun violence in just the last few weeks. The wave of injuries and deaths has revived the political debate surrounding America’s uncommonly lax gun laws, raising hopes for reform. Yet we’ve seen cycles of this sort before, with the hopes of victims, their families, and their communities dashed by congressional inaction, with even mild responses like universal background checks extinguished by the constitutionally built-in ease with which minorities can block action in the Senate.

Real reform is not impossible. The 1994 assault weapons ban passed by large margins in both House and Senate, also in the wake of a deadly school shooting. But to carry out such reform, Congress will have to overcome two key factors: the NRA’s entrenched position within the Republican Party, and the ability of the NRA and other interest groups to dismantle the current bicameral Democrat majority by peeling off legislators who take gun lobby money.