I hope I get better at this as I go along….

My plan is to use this space for intentional writing and musings on items of interest in my world. This is meant to mainly focus on finance/economics, but will inevitably wander into areas such as world politics, history, sports, and whisk(e)y. I am not a professional blogger, nor do I claim to be an expert in all things finance. I am a passionate and deeply curious person who wants to experiment with blog-form writing, and wants it to look (at least on the surface) like I put effort into it.

About me

I am a walking beard with glasses, and I live in the midwestern United States. I advise governments on all things finance, and hope to make the world a better place. I am an aspirational person, in that I aspire to do and be a lot, but only truly follow-up on a few things. We shall see if this blog is one of them.

I owe my quirkiness to my wife, I owe my dance moves to my daughter, I owe my curiosity to my mother, I owe my ambition to my father, I owe my love of music to one brother, and I owe my love of sports to the other brother. Keep life simple, only owe one thing to everybody. I owe my love of dad jokes to my father-in-law.

1.22.20

The United States exerts maximum economic pressure on other countries in a variety of ways, but one of the most intriguing and least talked about is in controlling the world’s “go to” currency. Thanks to a 1944 decision made at conference in Bretton Woods – the world relies on the USD as the currency of trade. When Country A wants to import something from Country B, they will agree to a price and enact the transaction. The transaction will ideally go through each party’s bank seamlessly. The process which takes place internally is the actual exchange of US dollars. Though the end users may never actually see the exchange of USD that took place, it was a crucial process. This reality makes USD extremely liquid, and extremely stable as far as currency goes. The fact that USD are exchanged for most trade transactions globally also allows the US government to claim that any/all of those transactions are subject to the rules of the US government, and if those rules are not followed, the government can deny those transactions that vital economic processes will lose their seamlessness. This is how sanctions become so effective at coercing global political acquiescence, the implicit threat of jamming up an entire country’s trade activity is ever present.