China And Russia Hint At Dropping US Dollar

Vladimir Putin joins scores of other heads of state in calling for complete overhaul of global financial system
Reports from the Russian media suggest that the country is on the verge of an agreement with China to renounce the US dollar and stop using it in international settlements.
“The recent meeting between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, created a financial sensation,” reports RIA Novosti.
“Wen said that the two nations could withstand the global financial crisis if they joined forces; Putin urged him to go farther and stop using U.S. dollars in Russian-Chinese settlements.”
Russia Today reports that Putin has also called for a complete overhaul of the world’s financial system to “end monopoly in world finance”.
The move comes as the dollar is rebounding and gaining strength for the first time in months, leading some to suspect the move is part of a wider political agenda.
Igor Nikolayev, chief strategic analyst at FBK private auditing firm told RIA Novosti “I think it was a political statement rather than an economic decision. There is a dominant public sentiment that the United States is the source of all evil, so let’s stop using the dollar,”.
Despite recent gains, negative dollar sentiment has now become global. Over the past year the dollar has hit all time lows, mainly due to continued rate cuts and injections of liquidity by the Federal Reserve.
China has threatened repeatedly to use the so called “nuclear option” and liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries in response to continued pressure on the Communist state to force a yuan revaluation. According to a reports earlier this year, such an event “could trigger a dollar crash” which would now have disastrous consequences for an American economy already firmly in a recession.
Questions remain, however, over what would take the place of the dollar as an international currency, with China not likely to accept use the ruble or the Euro and Russia unlikely to agree to use the yuan.
Vladimir Putin’s call for a new financial world order echoes that of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who wants dozens of world leaders to meet at a “Bretton Woods II” summit where they would rewrite the rules of international finance encompassing “very large and very radical changes”.
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Friday, Oct 31, 2008