The Petrodollar is Dead to China

We Boggart Bloggers have written extensively about the efforts of China and Russia to either float a new global reserve currency, backed by gold, to replace the US$ or at least serve as a rival and an alternative to the dollar. Now, post pandemic, post Great reset, and with war in Ukraine still threatening to plunge the world into its biggest economic crisis ever. The signs were there ten years ago, but now we see it happening. Saudi Arabia has effectively killed the petrodollar by agreeing with China, the world's biggest importer of oil and petroleum products, to accept payment for Saudi oil in Chinese yuan. 

For more history on the dedollarization of world trad go to out Currency Wars page.

For a summary of how things stand now read the embedded article below.

 

Authored by Goldfix;

In 2017 while researching option marketmaking business ideas in Energy overseas, much was learned about the growing rift between the BRICS and the G7 as it manifested even back then.

Making Markets in NYMEX Oil and Natural Gas Options...

Where’s Waldo (VBL)?

One byproduct of this explorative experience was seeing1 how global commodity supply/demand pricing dynamics could handicap global trade trends.Regarding Gold, this is what we learned back then:

Since 2013 global players in Gold (and Oil) had been slowly opening up shop in the East and closing it in the West. Demand had been moving eastward, and related businesses followed that demand.

Over some years, a slow but unmistakable drift from the US to China was observed in Gold businesses. Between 2013 and 2017, gold demand in Asia caused a great migration eastward of vaults, physical and financial trading operations, and finally exchanges themselves to open shop there. Why? Because that is where the demand was.

What was also learned and observed was a growing but inextricable tie forming between Oil, Gold, and the Chinese Yuan. That learning gelled during a conversation between a physical oil trader and this author.

The physical oil trader (paraphrased) said this in 2017:

A few months ago, Russia did some Oil deals with China amounting to about $3BB testing Blockchain connectivity. The deals somehow were done through Seychelles and called for settlement in Yuan with a kind-of embedded call [EDIT- his words not mine-VBL] to convert to Gold on demand. So basically Russia and China did a Gold-for-Oil trade and used Blockchain to verify the Gold in Shanghai for custodial chain purposes.

We had been discussing blockchain potential in Oil and Gold clearing trades. But, long story short, the whole mechanism for Gold remonetization worldwide was witnessed in a single mind-blowing moment. Since then this author has written and spoken (NY Mines and Money) on the obsession many times to anyone in earshot.

Golden Yuan 2017 Articles…

One article remains as a coming-out moment for this development from September 2017:

What I saw as a test of Blockchain between Russia and China was much further along than originally seen.Deals are being done… And the info  I got was that the gold paid to Russia never left the Chinese vault. 

Source: Golden Yuan: Crude Backed By Gold is Here

  

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The War Against Woke: Woke Pushes Back

 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/04/15/university-blocks-academic-gender-wars-research/

A university has “confiscated” the findings of an academic studying Britain’s gender wars in a row over her “dangerous” research data, The Telegraph can reveal. 

Dr Laura Favaro began the first ever taxpayer-funded study into whether social scientists at universities feel censored over their views on transgender issues in March 2020 at City, University of London.

But it has descended into chaos, with the study’s author allegedly hounded out of the university, stripped of the findings she collected and barred from publishing them amid claims of transphobia.

Dr Favaro is now bringing an employment tribunal claim against City for harassment, victimisation and whistleblowing detriment, and claims she was discriminated against for her protected philosophical belief in the reality of biological sex. 

The postdoctoral researcher was invited to move from Spain to City’s Department of Sociology to conduct the study, which received £18,000 from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the equalities watchdog, and £10,000 from the British Academy. She produced a summary report on her findings for the EHRC that still has not been published. 

Hundreds of documents

Her study involved 50 individual interviews with academics in gender studies who identified as feminists, a representative survey of social scientists with 650 responses and hundreds of documents and tweets.

Scholars told her that they had threats of violence in the gender debate, hostility from colleagues, and others said they felt their careers “can’t survive that sort of backlash”, and that they have to have “secret conversations” to avoid reprisal and because “we are all so afraid”.

Her final work has not been published, as it was derailed by complaints about an article for Times Higher Education in which she warned that “a culture of discrimination, silencing and fear has taken hold”.

Following this, she says, her line managers told her that the study had “become an institutionally sensitive issue” and that “City considers my data to be dangerous” and is “frightened of making it public”. 

A research participant who “did not like the findings” and academics sympathetic to trans issues were among those who complained. One, Dr Sahra Taylor, a City lecturer, claimed it was an “attack piece on trans people [and] our existences” that has “clearly caused harm to many interviewed”. 

City found following an investigation that there was “no evidence” that the research breached any ethics criteria.

But City allegedly locked the email account Dr Favaro used to communicate with survey respondents, and demanded that she hand over all of her interview and survey data and delete any copies of it, before making her redundant on March 31, despite her claiming she has a permanent contract. Dr Favaro also claims City rejected her offer to give a talk on her findings. 

It means she cannot publish her survey or deposit it in the UK Data Archive, as she had hoped to, and feels her career is now in ruins. 

Dr Favaro told The Telegraph: “Those with a responsibility to support me have frustrated my ability to progress with the research or denied expected support via actions as well as omissions to act. This includes being ignored, ostracised, bullied, harassed – ending with a dismissal and confiscation of my data.

A spokesman for City, University of London, said it was “unable to comment on employment matters relating to individual members of staff” but “we refute the allegations made against us and reject the context in which they are presented” and “take our obligations with respect to ethics and integrity very seriously”.

The spokesman added: “At City, we have a legal obligation to protect freedom of expression that we take very seriously. We uphold academic freedom of inquiry in our education and research and are committed to ensuring that free and open-minded discussion can take place.

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 Here are a few student reviews for City from WhatUni.com:

from a second year Psychology student:

Psychology BSc (Hons)

University rating (1)

Avoid! Staff and students virtually have no relationship thus any reports by staff are prioritised over students. Security can be very unpleasant. As a paying student, I expect more respect, support and less problems from staff. There is virtually no teaching and constant strikes thus cancelled lectures. Staff encourage students to focus their priority on activities or any issues than assignments and exams. It's not social! Difficult to meet people, less opportunities, less events. The campus is so small! Thus you will constantly see all students at all times! One campus means there is limited rooms to study in! Think carefully because bigger campuses give students more space, more opportunities, more events and make the experience more worthwhile.

Second year Computer Science MSc

The first year of my course was taught completely online which negatively impacted its value. There was minimal hands on demonstrations for modules that would’ve benefited from them. This year has been much better. All my lectures are in the morning and tutorials in the afternoon. The teachers who run our tutorials are good at explaining and breaking down the content that we cover in the lectures. Sometimes we cover more practical things related to our coursework in these tutorials. Overall, the quality of the modules largely varies from the lecturer who prepares our content. Some are very well explained and have a good balance of theory and practical work whilst others rely largely on the extra reading.
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Out of the 20 reviews we checked the only others that offered a comment rather than confining themselves to the 5Star rating system confined themselves to comments on the social life and catering facilities.

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I would recommend "Explaining Postmodernism: Scepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault" by philosophy professor Stephen Hicks.

One thesis of the book is that postmodernism after the crisis of socialism / communism in the 50s with millions of deaths and unimaginably cruel dictatorships is socialism in a new guise. Since socialism has been empirically / theoretically refuted, the strategy shifted to attacking reason, facts and objectivity in order not to fall away from belief. With some success, as can be seen these days. The real enemy of postmodernism are still liberal, capitalist democracies with a western character.

This also explains the numerous contradictions of the followers of postmodern ideas:

- everything is relative, but the postmodernists say how the world really works.

- All cultures deserve the same respect, only western democracies are deeply sexist and racist

- Values ​​are subjective, but racism and sexism are bad

- Tolerance is good, dominance is bad: but when postmodernists come to power, political correctness follows

The question arises, is the relativism preached just a camouflage, or is it authentic? For example:

- The “West” is racist, although the abolition of slavery and the postulation of fundamental human rights came from Western democracies.

Postmodernism is primarily a political movement that strives for power and that uses relativism only as a weapon to achieve political goals. Postmodernists use relativism but don't believe in it. It's not about the equality of different cultures, but about fighting Western democracies.

It is essential to see through these strategies and protect the achievements of the Enlightenment against attacks by postmodernists.