Monday, October 26, 2009

High Dollar - Manifest Destiny

Article about the falling US $, and our exceptional acceptance of such leads me to believe that the OZ may actually be a good candidate for a future reserve currency.

I think perhaps we could purchase bankrupt far north eastern states rather than expecting them to secede from the US, to make our country's size commensurate with its stability and superior political and financial systems.

8 comments:

Chris Fellows said...

I don't think we're a good reserve currency, I'm still sure we'll take a tumble when the Renegade Mainland Provinces bubble bursts. Of course, this makes it even more important for us to diversify our economic base by investing in some far northeastern states!

Chris Fellows said...

It's the non sequitary's day off, so I thought I may as well fill in... I assume from your lack of comments you're not actually interested in discussing the "Colour Mars" trilogy and were only trying to make me read it as a psychological experiment? :)

Marco Parigi said...

I wasn't sure whether you had managed to get hold of Red Mars. That probably had the most discussable elemnts perhaps.

Chris Fellows said...

I haven't actually- planning to have another look in the library this afternoon.

Marco Parigi said...

As far as the Reserve currency thing goes, The Oz is the sixth most held currency in the World, and the US-Oz cross is the fourth highest traded currency pair. Commodity prices have been more stable in Oz terms than in US $ terms.

Although the common theme is "RMP rises - so too does Australia" and downwards presumably, this does not seem to be the case. The Oz is so liquid and flexible that it is a major platform for adjustment when bubbles burst. Therefore, I would suggest the thought experiment of "Where would the safe haven be IF an RMP bubble bursts explosively"

The Oz would only plummet until our exports were of such value as to be a huge engine of growth again.

Through that process, the reserves held in OZ dollars would buy roughly the same amount of easily tradeable resources, making the long term value of that decision even better.

Marco Parigi said...

Speaking of books there's
Superfreakonmics with a linked to article regarding climate change. Realclimate has attacked the chapter - so it must be good :)

Chris Fellows said...

As an eater of macropods rather than ruminants, I find much to applaud on the first one or two pages of the Superfreakonomics article! The thing that made me bang my head against the wall in despair at the world's stupidity the most times yesterday was Bob Brown tut-tutting about culling kangaroos... if people could only reason logically from their won core axioms, no matter how flawed, I should be very much happier....

Chris Fellows said...

Watch this space...

Still can't find Red Mars anywhere, oddly enough. Almost done with Blue, but got distracted into reading a few other things.