Доларска алхемија и казино економија
Dollar alchemy and the Casino Economy: World Economic Crisis

Summary/Abstract: The ongoing world economic crisis is not simply the state of the market, but a serious crisis of the system, whose roots can be traced to the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), when it was decided that the US dollar should become the world’s reserve currency, and that the dollar gold convertibility should be guaranteed by the American central bank. The US could not resist the temptation to (ab)use the opportunity it had and to start paying the import of goods from other countries by issuing dollars without proper coverage; later in 1971, the US unilaterally reneged on the commitment and suspended dollar- gold convertibility. Thus we found ourselves in a situation in which the US seemed to have finally managed to find the magic formula for making the century-old efforts of alchemists to create wealth out of nothing come true. By using its political, military and economic power, the US could simply “print” dollars and gain huge amounts of real material goods from all over the world. To satisfy its increasing appetites, the US took active steps to expand the dollar zone, either through new territories, or new trade assets. When the dollar had spread all over the world due to globalization, and since the total amount of tangible assets is limited, there came a period of intensive creation of new “virtual” assets that could be traded on financial markets. Speculative operations (which came about out of the blue) created a bubble, i.e. a huge mass of financial assets which greatly exceeds the current value of the real economic sector. When the bubble burst, we faced a crisis everyone seeks to resolve. Steps taken by major countries, primarily the US (pumping fresh money and decreasing interest rates), are like adding fuel to the fire. It is hardly likely that the solution to the problem can be what caused it in the first place.

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