https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Jardine_Matheson_%26_Co.It is useful to read the history of Jardine & Matherson as well as The East India Company, two major players in the Opium wars and supported by Great Britain.
Demand for silk and tea in GB was leading to a depletion of GB silver reserves on which underpinned the GB Pound Stirling.
The 19c GB solution:
To source smakeable Opium from its Indian & Burmese territories and exchange it for Chinese tea, Silk and condiments.
This had 2 effects: Save the GB burse a depletion of its Silver Reserves & addict te Chinese to Opium.
(Ollie North did a variation on this illicit practice in the 1980's when he, in conjunction with the CIA, set up a Drugs for Arms Deal for the Contras in Central America whan the US Congress had outlawed arms for these rebels.)
This is the nub of the Chinese century of humiliation, IMO.
Hong Kong became the trading centre for Opium for Chinese goods where Jardine-Matherson grew their business in relative safety from Chinese Authorities like some Caribean Islands are used by the Columbian Drug Lords as staging points for drugs one way & cash the other.
But of course this thread is about MMT but it has been sidetracked to Chinese decoupling by a poster above.
The real issue should be: Can the USD withstand the enormous money printing since the GFC without being underpinned by Gold and how long will
will it take for other currencies that are underpinned partially or fully by gold (whether Rinimbi or crypto currencies ) take to debunk the Greenback as te Global Reserve Currency? As Shakespere said: "That's the question"
The Bretton Woods agreement essentially set up the US banking & Capital Markets to go global (excluding Russia & China) and led to the USD
which was then underpinned by gold to morph into the "Global Reserve Currency". The next trick to further that was Nixon's removal of the dold standard which up to then had moderated Greenback printing and the rest is history.
So long as the world doesn't have a better alternative, the printing of Greenbacks will be Washington's salvation from bankrupcy and the US
domination of global trade which gives credibility to MMT, IMO.
One doesn't have to be Einstein to infer that China first wants to debunk the Greenback as the Global Reserve Currency and preferably replace it with a gold backed Rinimbi to establish China as the outright leader of the 21st C trade. China is by far the global leader in actual trade but the US
dominates the settlements via the Greenback.
