Barry Stuppler

The elimination of the dollar and the move to a gold backed reserve currency was the key focus at the BRIC conference that was held on April 14th in China.

The key to understanding the summit may be found in the joint statement, which refers to "the inadequacies and deficiencies of the existing international monetary and financial system...." Without question, this statement is about eliminating the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency. Therefore, the BRIC countries are asking for "the reform and improvement of the international monetary system, with a broad-based international reserve currency system providing stability and certainty." ...

One by one, the countries of the emerging world are loosening the shackles with which they tried to prevent their currencies from appreciating. It is not that they care less about export competitiveness than they did even a few weeks ago. It’s that they now care more, much more, about inflation. And with rising prices of commodities, especially food and oil, stoking inflation, officials are deciding that allowing a currency to appreciate is a good way to relieve the pressure...

The US lacks a “credible strategy” to stabilize its mounting public debt posing a small but significant risk of a new global economic crisis, says the International Monetary Fund.

In an unusually stern rebuke to its largest shareholder, the IMF said the US was the only advanced economy to be increasing its underlying budget deficit in 2011 at a time when its economy was growing fast enough to reduce borrowing....