Alternative Media Misanalysis of the Petrodollar and Russia

Dear Lord, please make the misanalysis of the Petrodollar and Russia stop. I think the Petrodollar and Russia (oh, and China two) are amongst the nearly always misanalyzed elements loved within certain elements of the gold and silver communities.

Zero Hedge joins the misanlysis fun with its piece Russia Just Pulled Itself Out of the Petrodollar. By the way, when someone figures out when elements of the freedom loving gold community fell in love with those paragons of freedom, free enterprise and property rights China and Russia, let me know.

But, I digress. As many of you know, the drop in oil prices, along with sanctions, has done significant damage to the Russian economy. Not surprisingly, in order to prop up their economy, they have had to crack open their foreign-currency reserve fund in order to help prop up the Ruble.

Somehow the logical actions of an economically wounded Russia has been construed to mean that the dollar is dead.

As Bloomberg reports Russia "may unseal its $88 billion Reserve Fund and convert some of its foreign-currency holdings into rubles, the latest government effort to prop up an economy veering into its worst slump since 2009."

Towards the end of the piece ZH adds...

And now, we await to see which other country will follow Russia out of the Petrodollar next, and what impact that will have not only on the world's reserve currency, on US Treasury rates, and on the most financialized commodity...

Yes, this hand waving article is about the "whopping" $88 billion that Russia is converting to Rubles owing to its economic distress. In terms of the dollar, Russia's actions don't even amount to loose change found under the couch cushion, yet we're treated to yet another hyperventilating article over the death of the dollar.

Sure, at some point the dollar will be replaced by something else - whether or not it burns like some seem to think / wish / hope is probably not the most probable outcome.

Right now there is no viable alternative to the dollar - not the euro, not the SDR, not the Yuan...there isn't anything ready to step up and fill in for the dollar. The Yuan is at best a decade, and more likely multiple decades from building out all of the requirements to be a legitimate all-purpose alternative to the dollar.

But, these kinds of articles from the alternative media that provide no context and merely pump out inaccurate memes are maddening to me.

Bottom Line: $88 billion the death of the dollar does not make. I made the decision a while back to reduce my media diet. Could only choke down so many of these "the end is near" pieces before I got conginitive indigestion.