Hacker News
The Humbling of the Once Almighty Dollar
alexjplant
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> I don’t want to overstate the case here. The dollar’s role as the dominant currency for ordinary business is not under threat. A new article in Foreign Policy by Agathe Demarais is titled “China’s de-dollarization drive has hit a wall.” [1]
The headline is this:
> Iran’s ability to withstand American pressure has demonstrated that U.S. sanctions are a lot less effective than in the past given that rogue actors can use the yuan and CIPS as a work-around.
The dollar as an instrument of offensive diplomacy is now weakened, not as the currency of international transaction. That being said Iran's economy isn't exactly doing numbers at the moment so even this caveat has a caveat.
[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/24/china-dollar-dedollariz...
aeternum
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Economic sanctions used to be rare, between 2000 and 2021 they grew by 1000% and the list is something like 17,000 entities long.
Is USD still a currency or is it now more like Robux: Swiftly confiscated if you violate the TOS?
torginus
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How strong was it in the first place? Anyone can just accept dollars without worrying they'll be able to spend them - the dollar spends just about anywhere, the US only has control of whether US companies will do business with you.
There have been quite a few countries whose central banking had collapsed, and they decided to just adopt the dollar or euro as currency, to the disapproval of the respective power blocs, but its not like they could do anything about it.
The only risk here is money printing, but that's not a targeted weapon (if its a weapon in the first place)
hnax
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throwaway-blaze
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You could make an argument that the Yuan could be an alternative to USD as a mechanism of international payments, but you ignore the danger of working in a currency controlled by a country with no rule of law.
Krugman is so blinded by Trump hatred that he can't be objective. You dont have to be a MAGA person to see this post is terribly stilted.
WalterGR
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postflopclarity
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jleyank
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talon8635
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sl_convertible
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NDlurker
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Cipater
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archonis
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Were you alive and in the Northeast US during the 80s and 90s, if not, what are your sources?
eesmith
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In some more fundamental sense, you are right - he hasn't changed that much. Doonesbury, 16 September 1987 characterized him as "I'm just a billionaire developer exercising trial balloons! If I were running [for President] though, it'd be as an original, as a beloved archetype - the American Landlord!" https://readingdoonesbury.com/2018/06/01/selling-reagan-to-b...
You couldn't have read Doonesbury at the time without knowing that a lot of people didn't like Trump, but did things for him because of his money.
Certainly some people did like him. Some of those trial balloons went over really well with racists, like the malicious Central Park 5 ad. ("even a fool can become a multi-millionaire." and 'Trump "was the fire starter" in 1989, as "common citizens were being manipulated and swayed into believing that we were guilty."' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Park_jogger_case ).
As one of the examples of how we know a lot of people didn't like the short fingered vulgarian, here's a 50 second piece featured in "Alive from Off Center" in 1991, starting at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7pKQ-Imco&t=559 and ending with the assertion that names like Donald Trump ("a man who can buy his cake and eat it too") "are just fancy names for irrelevance".
IMO what changed is the economic insecurity as the New Deal and Great Society were torn down from the rise of neoliberal thought in the 1970s, funded by rich reactionaries who want to return to a pre-New Deal America, and embraced by both major parties who are more beholden to rich donors than the electorate. As President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." That continues to be used to redirect anger towards minorities, instead of at the rich people, and Trump, as you point out, has for decades been a master at picking that pocket.