The events of the last year certainly have a role to play, but the overall effect is just the result of trendlines that have been in play for quite a while.
I think the initial catalyst for this was when the US/Biden arbitrarily removed Russia from SWIFT post Ukraine invasion. Whether people agreed or disagreed with that decision isn't really material to the discussion, the fact remained that the west decided to remove Russia and they basically had no recourse. And given the, well, unpredictable nature of the current US executive I think it's kinda kicked other countries into overdrive.
America was in practice running an empire that collected tribute from the rest of planet earth in exchange for entries in a database denominated in a currency they controlled and that was accepted everywhere. Really the only way it could go wrong is putting it under the control of someone who doesn't understand the kayfabe...
I am actually convinced that the last year started the descent of the U.S. as the world’s super power. No wonder U.S. treasuries lost trust. It’s only going to get worse. It doesn’t matter what some billionaires do/get from their ability to manipulate some powers be. The rest of the investment community understands that free markets are strengthened by rule of law and adherence to the law and deploying a self styled socialistic distribution of economic capital is not signaling strength but weakness to the world.
For the first time in history we are seeing multiple signals of USD losing its #1 position to EUR, all within the last year :
1. Euro-denominated interest rate derivatives (IRD) overtook US dollar-denominated contracts in the over-the-counter (OTC) market for the first time in history and the scale of the crossover is staggering.
2. EUR Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) which measures actual purchasing power (not nominal price) is going in the opposite direction of USD real purchasing power (RTWEXBGS). 2025/2026 is the largest divergence in history: 10 percentage points in a year.
3. US treasuries is no longer a number 1 foreign reserve asset. EUR reserves grew 2.5x faster than USD reserves when measured in its own absolute terms.
Unlike the Eurozone which maintains a fiscally responsible budget with reasonable debt and a trade surplus, there is simply no foreseeable fix to the problem of ballooning US debt and trade deficits. Nothing can fix the US budget mess.
Anyone who is paying attention to the numbers would certainly have more confidence in EUR over USD.
Since a lot of time the US economy and finance are under stress. Not panic but stress. And this makes the leaders stressful too, so they take defensive and hostile actions, most lately by the Trump's government. The world will neither wait nor allow the US to remain leader, especially with non standard ways. The world changes to a tri-pole with satellite nodes. Gold price is just a variable in the system and is dependent of the global state.
24 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 33.3 ms ] threadIt's like witnessing a self-decapitation.
Here's a world gold council (i know...) review/survey of central banks gold holdings from mid 2025 (https://www.gold.org/goldhub/research/central-bank-gold-rese...). It notes that gold purchases (by mass) have been elevated going back to ~2023.
Gold prices have also been on an upward trajectory ever since 2023 (https://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html)
Whatever is happening now is bigger than actions over the last year.
Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gold-reserves
1. Euro-denominated interest rate derivatives (IRD) overtook US dollar-denominated contracts in the over-the-counter (OTC) market for the first time in history and the scale of the crossover is staggering.
2. EUR Real Effective Exchange Rate (REER) which measures actual purchasing power (not nominal price) is going in the opposite direction of USD real purchasing power (RTWEXBGS). 2025/2026 is the largest divergence in history: 10 percentage points in a year.
3. US treasuries is no longer a number 1 foreign reserve asset. EUR reserves grew 2.5x faster than USD reserves when measured in its own absolute terms.
Unlike the Eurozone which maintains a fiscally responsible budget with reasonable debt and a trade surplus, there is simply no foreseeable fix to the problem of ballooning US debt and trade deficits. Nothing can fix the US budget mess.
Anyone who is paying attention to the numbers would certainly have more confidence in EUR over USD.