Welcome to the third episode of my ‘ignored news’ blog.
For some months the ‘specialist’ media have been tracking a major structural change in the world’s economy brought-on by the Ukraine War: Not the well-publicised crisis of food or energy prices; but of who controls the world’s financial payments system, and its use to enforce Western sanctions. Yet for some reason, the rest of the mainstream news just doesn’t seem interested in the consequences of this for every citizen of the affluent West.
As someone who has spent an unreasonably long amount of time protesting outside American military and intelligence sites, it’s always been clear to me that American power isn’t primarily cultural, or military: It’s economic. More importantly, it’s the power of the American state to make dollars ‘unobtainable’ – to ration people’s access to ready cash – which forces compliance to American hegemonic control1.
The power of the dollar has, for decades2, granted the USA not just global power, but also a more stable domestic economy as it controls the global trade system for its own self-interest: Between a third and a half of global trade is sold in dollars; about half of global debt is valued in dollars; and for that reason, 84% of foreign exchange transactions involve dollars, as countries or companies ‘buy’ or ‘sell’ dollars so that they can trade with someone else.
Now that system is faltering, in part driven by the conflict in Ukraine – and the ‘popular’ news media are seemingly oblivious to the significance of this.
Paul Mobbs is an independent environmental consultant, investigator, author and lecturer, and maintains the Free Range Activism Website (FRAW).
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To rebuild the trade union movement, to meaningfully defend the right to strike, and to begin a serious fightback against the imposition of the costs of capitalism’s crisis on the working class, we need to put our energy into workplace and community organising
As soaring consumer prices, supply chain disruptions, and reductions in government-provided funding and services threaten communities, localists can help bolster local markets and inspire mutual aid efforts, helping mobilize folks to take more responsibility for their own collective resilience and well-being.
September 1, 2026
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Ya – petrodollars. US tacit actions to guarantee dollar hegemony. For decades we’ve been able to effortlessly “export” inflation, among other financial parameters.
It was in Obama’s time that it became obvious that China would deny US access to much of the world’s oceans – an historic change much on the mind of the USN.
It now seems clear that even items such as basic medicines will be in shortage for the foreseeable future – less due to weaponization of economies than the general failure of ready sources of energy, resource, and maintenance capacity. (For instance, lack of corporate profit, in this case, for medicines.)
Dan D Lion
3 years ago
Thank you very much for the article. Spot on analysis.
All of “that” is the reason the US is desperate, the neocons know exactly what’s happening, it’s only the public that don’t – hence the US’s Nord Stream 2 destruction and the reduction of Europe to vassal status.
The US will continue to double down in it’s fight against Russia, it’s carefully laid plans as evidenced by the Maidan massacre and coup, it’s armament of Ukraine and deliberately bad faith Minsk agreements (admission by Merkel etc), have misfired and been misjudged badly and failed to overturn Putin or cripple Russia.
The result has driven Russia and China together and displayed to the world the ruthless US use of the weaponised dollar with the result the trust in the dollar and US paper has been lost. The Saudis vote of no confidence was a profound and unexpected rebuke and brings an end to the petrodollar.
If the BRICS and their many new wannabe members succeed with their declared venture to create an alternative gold backed trading system the US will suffer a massive unstoppable financial disintegration.
mwildfire
3 years ago
I just want to mention that, contrary to the first words of this, I’ve been reading plenty about all this–mostly on the daily digest from Popular Resistance, a good place for news the “mainstream” (corporate) media don’t see fit to print.
Comments
Welcome to the new Resillience commenting system!
We have moved from the former Disqus commenting system to a new system as of September 10, 2026.
We made this change because of privacy concerns regarding Disqus. It's also part of a set of changes to bring more services to the Resilience community under a single login: commenting, (coming September 2026), and online courses (coming 2027). Unfortunately, your old Disqus comments may not reliably link to your account in this new system. Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.
Ya – petrodollars. US tacit actions to guarantee dollar hegemony. For decades we’ve been able to effortlessly “export” inflation, among other financial parameters.
It was in Obama’s time that it became obvious that China would deny US access to much of the world’s oceans – an historic change much on the mind of the USN.
It now seems clear that even items such as basic medicines will be in shortage for the foreseeable future – less due to weaponization of economies than the general failure of ready sources of energy, resource, and maintenance capacity. (For instance, lack of corporate profit, in this case, for medicines.)
Thank you very much for the article. Spot on analysis.
All of “that” is the reason the US is desperate, the neocons know exactly what’s happening, it’s only the public that don’t – hence the US’s Nord Stream 2 destruction and the reduction of Europe to vassal status.
The US will continue to double down in it’s fight against Russia, it’s carefully laid plans as evidenced by the Maidan massacre and coup, it’s armament of Ukraine and deliberately bad faith Minsk agreements (admission by Merkel etc), have misfired and been misjudged badly and failed to overturn Putin or cripple Russia.
The result has driven Russia and China together and displayed to the world the ruthless US use of the weaponised dollar with the result the trust in the dollar and US paper has been lost. The Saudis vote of no confidence was a profound and unexpected rebuke and brings an end to the petrodollar.
If the BRICS and their many new wannabe members succeed with their declared venture to create an alternative gold backed trading system the US will suffer a massive unstoppable financial disintegration.
I just want to mention that, contrary to the first words of this, I’ve been reading plenty about all this–mostly on the daily digest from Popular Resistance, a good place for news the “mainstream” (corporate) media don’t see fit to print.