Crime Against Humanity: Forms of Seigniorage, 7
Well, this is what the “american dream” is made of: we’re on the outside, nose against the glass, watching the more equal than others enjoy Playland and filling our dreams with it, and we don’t realise that the abundance that makes it all possible in the first place is composed of what we’ve been robbed of. And not that being the United States, Playland or Whateverland makes any difference, as red herring would lead the ingenuous to think; it’s a matter of plain and simple out exchange: getting something in exchange for less, or even nothing, and maybe even seizing it by hook or by crook. So the relevance and the specificity of this United States case must not in any way obfuscate our ability to grasp the mechanism in itself and thus detect it everywhere and in any way it materialises in history.
And if all that was still not enough as to the effects of suppression perpetrated through international seigniorage, since its exercise consists of creating fraudulent purchasing power out of nothing just as in any form of seigniorage, its inherent inflationary effects must be added as well, but I will discuss this ahead as part of what I call “ambiguous money cycle”.
By the way, not without reason international seigniorage is also referred to as “exporting inflation”. When a country sets off to exploit its however achieved strong position by creating purchasing power out of nothing and “going shopping” around the world with it, we know the spell holds as long and to the degree other countries consider that purchasing power real. In search of reliable indicators of that reality, other countries may look at its wealth and inflation: if wealth is high and inflation is low, then that country is considered respectable, solvent, and its purchasing power real. What’s the trick? The surplus purchasing power out of nothing is channelled mainly abroad; consequently, the domestic money to product ratio remains stable, while the surplus money is used to acquire product abroad in exchange for nothing, and that product comes home to further boost domestic wealth. Imported wealth in exchange for exported inflation.
In the previous US variant, the strong position was acquired with the victory in war, sanctified in the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system, and capitalised in gold reserves: other currencies had to maintain their parity with the dollar, and the dollar in turn had to maintain its own parity to its gold reserves. Obviously enough, the United States began that ambiguous money cycle I’ll discuss later on, the dollar begun to “flood the world”, and this went on despite the suspicions, until it triggered the “French raid on Fort Knox”: France “called the US’s bluff”, and that was the end of Bretton Woods. However, who has given has given, who has had has had.
