US dollar dying as tensions over Ukraine heat up

In his Friday column for Press TV website, F. William Engdahl said Russia and leading trading countries are developing “alternatives to using the US dollar for their bilateral trade.”

The analyst said the US government has been printing “money without limit, in order to rescue the bankrupt Wall Street banks with what the Federal Reserve calls Quantitative Easing.”

“Washington’s decision to go for the military coup in Ukraine [has]…isolated the power of US hegemony and opened the door for a genuine multipolar world where peaceful cooperation replaced military threats and sole superpower domination,” Engdahl stated.

He said Washington’s “foolish” imposition of sanctions on Russia over Crimea’s secession from Ukraine “has forced Moscow to react by selling Gazprom bonds not in the dollar market but rather in the fast-emerging Chinese Yuan.”

“The US has just shot itself in the foot,” he wrote.

Citing a new report by the International Monetary Fund, Engdahl said there has been a “dramatic shift” from the “US dollar as reserve currency.”

“The foolish [US President Barack] Obama sanctions threats against Moscow are simply accelerating the refocus of giant Russian companies like Gazprom and Norilsk Nickel to the huge Asian market,” wrote the analyst.

He said following the “NATO-led Ukraine coup and ensuing crisis,” other countries “are looking to lessen their dollar exposure.”

The analyst said “stupid people” in the United States and NATO have failed to “think through or foresee the global consequences of their actions.”

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