To believe in someone is to give them credit for
their truthfulness and for other commendable characteristics. To believe in
something is to trust that the thing will remain stable at least during the
foreseeable future.
And so, if you think about life in general––as you
decide how much credit you should give to people and to things around
you––you'll often find that 99 percent is an appropriate level.
In fact, if I were not nearly 100 percent certain
that I shall live long enough to finish writing this article, I would not be
writing it. But here I am, doing just that. Why so? Because I trust that my
current health condition, and all that surrounds me shall remain stable at
least for as long as it will take me to finish writing the article.
However, while we human beings, appreciate seeing
stability in most of the things that we have accomplished, we work to improve
on some other things. This means we continually destabilize those other things
in order to change them. In so doing, we place our trust not on the stability
of the thing, but on the expectation that our effort will produce the changes
we desire.
For example, if someone hires me to teach his
child algebra, and I do that, I expect to be paid, thus see a change in my bank
account. For this reason, I trust and give credit to the system that recognizes
the binding validity of a contract such as the one I had with the child's parents.
On the other hand, if I write a piece and submit
it to a publisher only to see it returned to me––having been mined of its
content, and that content used to enrich the publisher and his team of sterile
literary hacks––my trust in the profession vanishes. This forces me to give
zero credit to the so-called liberal democracy which pretends to tower over all
other systems because of its honesty when in reality it is devoid of any shred
of honesty.
This brings us to the currency of a nation, the
value of which is supposed to represent the trust that's owed to that nation.
In fact, the value of the currency is regarded as a testament to a nation's
credit worthiness. But while this is supposed to be true in theory, the fact
remains that many extraneous factors decide the market value of a nation's
currency. This makes it a futile exercise to try determining the absolute
intrinsic value of a nation's currency at any given moment.
Well then, does this mean we cannot discuss the
currency of a nation? No, it doesn't mean that. What it means is that the
subject is so vast, we must be clear which aspect of it we are discussing. In
fact, circumstances are such at this time, that a debate on the subject has
been raging for a while. An example of that came in the form of an article
under the title: “How Europe and Russia Are Fighting U.S. Sanctions” and the
subtitle: “Will it determine American financial dominance in the long-run?” The
article was written by Nikolas K. Gvosdev and published on October 6, 2018 in the
National Interest.
What Gvosdev says is that America is using its
dominant position to impose economic sanctions left and right on the nations of
the world whose behavior it does not like. He goes on to say that America is
getting away with the practice, but there is a risk in that. But then, after
making a convincing argument that America is doing the things that will hurt it
in the long run, Gvosdev concludes his presentation with this remark:
“Consumers and producers may still be unwilling to accept payment in something
other than dollars, given the continued deficit of trust in the value of the
yuan”.
What the writer did in effect, was address one
side of the equation while ignoring the other side. He said that the world has
not built enough trust in the yuan, but did not say that the trust in China and
its currency are rising at the same time as they are falling for America and
its currency: the once mighty dollar. Gvosdev has thus failed to draw the
conclusion that would have reflected a true picture of the current situation.
In any case what comes to the fore in the Nikolas
Gvosdev article is that America is abusing its dominant position and behaving
like a bully in a world that no longer tolerates this kind of behavior.
More than anything, this is why people distrust
America. They react to its behavior by bonding with the Chinese and anyone that
works toward an alternative to the existing financial system.