BRICS Summit Calls for New World Order

 You might want to add BRICS to you vocabulary.  It stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.  They would love to come out with their own digital currency, backed by gold, that the whole world would start to use as reserve currency and unseat the US Dollar from its 75 year throne.  The author of this article doesn’t think that’s going to happen quite yet...so maybe some good news for those of us in America that have built our lifestyles on borrowed money.

*******************

Talk of de-dollarisation has gathered pace, as members of the Brics economic group meet this week in South Africa for a summit, but the US currency is unlikely to lose its crown as the world's international reserve currency.

Members Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa are pushing to expand the bloc's membership at the August 22-24 annual leaders’ summit in Johannesburg.

At least 23 countries are said to have expressed an interest in joining the group.

Any new additions to Brics will be the first expansion since South Africa, the second largest economy in Africa, joined the group in 2010. Among the potential candidates are economic powerhouses including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

Also on the agenda of the 15th annual summit are talks on greater use of local currencies to settle trade between the countries.

Leaders and financial policymakers of the member states are also scheduled to discuss prospects of a Brics currency, aimed at challenging the dominance of the US dollar and dethroning it as the international reserve currency.

The summit will push to adopt policies that can help Brics increase its political clout in line with its growing economic and financial influence in the world.

“We want to make the Brics very strong politically, very strong financially,” Brazilian President Lula da Silva was reported by Bloomberg as saying.

Despite attempts to rally support against the US dollar, analysts believe the bloc is unlikely to materially dent the dominance of the greenback.

“Overall, whilst any 'Brics+' grouping could bring into question the speed and scale with which member countries adopt commercial and financial systems outside of the US dollars domain, we hold conviction in our previous examination that being fed up with the US dollars dominance is old hat, and it will remain the world’s currency of first resort, in our view,” said Ehsan Khoman, head of commodities, ESG and emerging markets research at MUFG bank.

A combination of the financial sanctions leverage, which the US applies to “shut adversaries’ economies out of the US dollar payments system”, China’s growing status as a competitor to Washington's international supremacy, and the splintering of geopolitical blocs, has prompted much discussion on “the weaponisation of the US dollar”, according to the lender.

The core part of the debate remains whether other currencies can mount a challenge to the still mighty dollar.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/2023/08/23/brics-summit-dollar/