I agree, this is significant. The death knell for the WTO free...

I agree, this is significant. The death knell for the WTO free trade agreement was when countries threw up their hands at the process and inability to agree, then went and started signing bilateral and regional agreements.

At the end of the day, the concept of a "reserve" currency is over-rated. What really matters is that some actual trading gets done. Trading isn't getting done at the moment, because the accepted means of executing that trade has broken down. Currency is only part of that process (mostly it's the creditworthiness of the counter-parties and the willingness of banks to provide commercial letters of credit, but most deals are done in $US or at $US prices).

If the $US-based trading system begins to be seen (rightly or not) as being part of the problem, the Yanks won't believe how fast the rest of the world drops their dollar like a sack of spuds.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people watching this China/Argentina experiment with great interest.