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Again, it's pretty difficult to predict how things are going to unfold. How things unfold depends on the answers to the very large political questions that the US and the world will soon answer, but at the moment, no one is entirely sure what the political configuration in the US is going to be.
It's a mistake to make the dollar into a fetish as Ron Paul does because the dollar is ultimately a political issue. The dollar could retain it's standing and at the same time, the US could lose autonomy over currency policy through international. Whether you peg the dollar to gold, move to another reference currency, or regulate international flows of capital, the end result is the same: a loss of political autonomy. Ron Paul's idea of pegging it to gold is a particularly clumsy and inflexible, and he knows it. It's part of a shock therapy to get the US economy to look like a neoliberal fantasy land. It's not going to fly, especially not now. If i were to bet on a likely outcome, i'd say it would be a structure of international regulation because that gives all actors a maximum of flexibility and because it would provide some tools for managing capital flows and whatever other problems may arise. Existing institutions may end up with new roles. I'm curious to see what comes out of that WTO meeting in November.
Anyway, i revisited this thread because i wanted to note that Industrial Carriers, a Ukranian shipper went bankrupt a couple weeks ago. Britannia Bulk is said to be in deep trouble now.
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