Hi GC, I would agree with a lot of what is in you post. Except the bit about China. I think the " cheap crap in Walmart * era is long gone. China is on the same trajectory that the Japanese , Koreans and Taiwan were on. Their factories are increasingly state of the art. My bet is that when they start doing reliability studies on cars in 2 to 3 years times , they will have surpassed US and European cars. Their use of robotics and automation is probably already superior to the US. But that not what is required for the renminbi ( forget about the BRICS, ) to become a reserve currency , it needs to be released from CCP control, not happening soon.