Southeast Asia, like much of the rest of the world, is losing patience with King Dollar.
The westernization of the world’s reserve currency, as through sanctions on those deemed bad actors — such as Russia for its war in Ukraine — has pushed even the typically diplomatic Southeast Asians to warn the US of the consequences.
In a conference in Singapore on Tuesday (Jan 10), multiple former officials spoke about de-dollarisation efforts underway and what economies in the region should be doing to mitigate the risks of a still-strong dollar that’s weakened local currencies and become a tool of economic statecraft.
“The US dollar is a hex on all of us,” George Yeo, former foreign minister of Singapore, said at the conference hosted by the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. “If you weaponise the international financial system, alternatives will grow to replace it” and the US dollar will lose its advantage.
While few expect to see the end of King Dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon, Yeo urged that the risk of it happening be taken more seriously.
“When this will happen, no one knows, but financial markets must watch it very closely,” said Yeo, who is a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
After gaining 6.2% in 2022, the US dollar is down 0.67% in the first several days of this year, through the end of Tuesday, according to the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index.
Yeo noted that in times of crisis, the US dollar rises further — as with levies on Russia that have left Russian banks estranged from a network that facilitates tens of millions of transactions every day, forcing them to lean on their own, much smaller version instead. That’s put more pressure on third-party countries, too, which have to unduly rely on US dollar use.
Following on Yeo’s remarks later in the conference, former Indonesian trade minister Thomas Lembong applauded Southeast Asia's central banks that already have developed direct digital payments systems with local currencies, and encouraged officials to find more ways to avoid leaning too hard on the greenback.
“I have believed for a very long time that reserve currency diversification is absolutely critical,” said Lembong, who’s also a co-founder and managing partner at Quvat Management Pte Ltd. Supplementing US dollar use in transactions with use of the euro, renminbi, and the yen, among others, would lead to more stable liquidity, and ultimately more stable economic growth, he said.
The 10 Asean countries are just too disparate to establish a common currency as with the euro bloc. But Lembong said he was “deeply passionate” on this subject of the US dollar as a global reserve currency.
The direct digital payments systems — which have boosted local currency settlement between Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand — are “another great outlet for our financial infrastructure”, he said.- Bloomberg
China has kept the Covid virus away from its people for 3 years with a stringent lockdown. The Chinese people could move around inside China free from the virus, like living in a cocoon. While the Americans were suffering from more than 100m infections, probably double that as the numbers are unreliable knowing congenital American liars, and more than 1m deaths, again could be higher, China only had a couple of hundred thousand infections and about 5,000 deaths.
The Americans were envious and angry that their mismanagement and quarrelsome domestic politics have turned them into an international basket case, a nation with the most infection and most deaths while the Chinese were saved from this pandemic. So they went all out to smear the Chinese lockdown as violation of human rights. According to American so called human rights, freedom to do as everyone pleases is more important than protecting lives. The Chinese human rights chose to protect and save the lives of their people. China thus was repeatedly attacked by the Americans and demanding that the lockdown be removed to let the Chinese people move around freely like the Americans and infecting everyone like the Americans. If China would to listen to the Americans, the infection in China could be more than 300m or 400m and death could be several millions.
China avoided this disaster. The Chinese people were saved.
After 3 years of mutation, the virus has reached a stage as scientifically expected, to be be less virulent and less deadly. It is gradually turning into the common flu. Infections could be high but no longer as deadly as the beginning. China now decided to loosen the control measures which should make the Americans happy as that was what they were demaning. But no, the Americans are angry again, politicising the issue by raising barriers of entry to basket USA.
When the loosening was first announced, many countries announced that they would not increase monitoring measures as they know that this was unnecessary. When China opens up, the Chinese would be exposed and infected by all the virus mutations from the rest of the world, especially from basket case America. When the Chinese visit these countries, visit basket America, the worse would be bringing back the same virus that these countries spread to them, and the same virus that these countries are living with. No big deal.
But the Americans spread another lie, that the Chinese would bring in new mutations. What a joke. And silly American cronies and stooge countries also parroted this new anti China narrative as expected. Within a couple of weeks, all the American cronies and stooges, those that found no need to add new measures to check on Chinese visitors changed their position, under the coercion of the Americans of course. They have yet to say that they were coerced by the Chinese like they used to say in the past. When the Americans were the ones that were twisting their arms to make them do the American bidding, they would turn around to accuse the Chinese for doing it. These are they typical response from American cronies and stooges.
So, the world's number one basket Covid country is raising barriers to keep the world's lowest infected country, China, to stop the Chinese to visit them. What a joke! And the best part, all the retail business of these countries, especially those that are hoping for the high spending Chinese to bring in the tourist dollars, would be kept hanging up dry. The same scenario is repeating like forbidding the oil hungry Europeans from buying cheap Russia oil and gas, forbidding American chip manufacturers from selling their chips to the biggest buyer, China, left them all hungry and broke.
China should please the Americans and their cronies and stooges by banning their people from visiting these silly countries and basket America. There are many friendly countries and interesting places to go to and spend their cash.
What else can be more silly than a basket country like America, pretending to be afraid of being infected by Chinese coming out from a clean cocoon, afraid to be infected by the Chinese when the whole Ameican population is already infected?
Keep living with your lies and delusion, basket case America. The Covid virus is in your blood, inside every American due to your freedom to travel, for the virus as well.
Hu Says: China opened its border on Sun, and the dynamic zero-COVID
policy which protected the Chinese people for three years has passed into history. China will return to the world as an engine of global economic growth with new economic and political influence.
In recent weeks, the Western media's coverage of China has been dominated by news of it refining its COVID-19 policies. Expectedly, it turned into a China-bashing carnival. Some said the country has lost its fight against the pandemic, others said it's a failure of China's political system, while boasting of the superiority of "democracy". How do we make sense of China's e
More overseas trips expected as downgraded COVID management comes into effect
Chinese travelers are expected to make more overseas trips as the downgrading management of COVID-19 officially took effect
on Sunday, when the inbound quarantine for international arrivals is canceled while outbound travel of Chinese citizens will also be resumed
in an orderly
After three years of a difficult epidemic fight, we have finally won the strategic initiative of this "tough battle" and ushered in an
important turning point.
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According to the NIH & CDC, atherosclerosis is the number 1 cause of vascular disease in the USA. 50% of people over 45 have this disease.
0:00 Peripheral Arterial Disease
0:31 What is a blood clot?
0:51 Arteriosclerosis vs Atherosclerosis
1:10 Coronary Artery Disease & Stiff Arteries
2:20 Clogged Arteries
2:55 Cholesterol
3:39 Vascular specialist & Peripheral artery disease test
4:30 Angioplasty Vascular Surgery
6:10 Bypass Vascular Surgery
6:45 Atherosclerosis medications & treatment
7:20 Alcohol inflammation
8:08 Smoking
8:38 Marijuana & Cannabis
9:05 Stress
10:05 Obesity
11:05 Strength Training
11:35 Cardiovascular exercise
12:38 Best foods for Atherosclerosis
13:50 Sugar
14:05 Trans Fats
14:35 Best cooking oils
15:15 Good fats vs. bad fats
16:00 Omega 3 Fatty Acids
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