The Fed has already announced QE3, which will further erode the US dollar, and further crush the purchasing power of the 99%
Inflation's roughly 0.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
It's a little hard to declare "eroding of the dollar is destroying purchasing power" when prices aren't going up. If you are going to claim QE3 is going to cause massive inflation, you'll have to explain why QE1 and QE2 didn't cause massive inflation despite the same predictions of doom.
The US is already undergoing systemic underming of its dollar as the global reserve currency
And replacing it with......? The Euro? Don't make me laugh. The Yuan? They'd have to let it float freely first, and they can't do that without crippling exports and thus sending China into chaos. There's a long-term danger here, but this isn't going to change in the next decade. Euro just blasted itself in the foot as the world's trading currency, and there's nothing else remotely viable, for now.
This status is all that keeps the empire afloat.
You VASTLY overstate the benefit. It's roughly 0.1% GDP.
http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/seignor.html
China, Russia, India, Brasil, Iran, soon even Japan, etc, are all cutting bi-lateral trade deals in their OWN currencies
Um....we care because? They're transactions that don't involve the US. The only "benefit" we would get from these transactions literally being in suitcases full of dollars is a slightly higher exchange rate. Which is gonna hurt that 99% a lot more than help, since that makes foreign goods cheaper.
In reality, the deals aren't done with suitcases full of cash. Instead, international banks hold some reserves in the NY Fed to have 'dollars' and just move the appropriate numbers of Rubles and Yen into the appropriate accounts. Real money isn't used, just bits in computers with a small portion in real money reserves. The benefit here is a relatively small 0-interest loan to the NY Fed from that international bank. Losing that wouldn't hurt much.
Ask Sadam amd Ghaddafi about this (both were attempting to pull of of the petro-dollar lock-up and were invaded within months).
You got the order backwards there. It was clear W was about to invade, so Sadam started making noise about OPEC switching to Euros. 'Round about the time we refused Sadam's offer to let arms inspectors return to Iraq. Similar with Ghaddafi - the "let's not use dollars!!" push happened after it was clear hostilities would be occurring shortly.
Hard times are coming all our myriad ways.
Yes, but only because our economy is run by morons. On the plus side, the economy of everyone in the advanced world is currently being run by morons, so our relative position is secure.
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