I do not understand this international finance stuff and likely never will. The above book deals with Bretton Woods.
I believe that the petro dollar arrangement greatly benefited the US somehow and a reduction in this will harm the US.
Having the USD as the reserve currency greatly benefits the US somehow. If this is reduced this will harm the US.
I am not saying the US and western financial systems are evil but that they are gamed to extract more wealth from the rest of the world than would be possible using something similar to barter.
I saw some doc on the Brit financial system titled I think The Spiders Web. How it helps UK.
I recall that France creates the French CAF currency used as a regional reserve currency in central Africa. That somehow extracts wealth into France. Ghadaffi proposed a gold backed dinar to replace it. That was enough for NATO to have him killed and Libya destroyed. That is real enough for me.
I am not saying France is evil but that they gamed the system to extract more wealth from from Africa than would be possible using something similar to barter.
If these come unraveled and physical reality becomes more important then the US will be harmed. I heard that Russian econ growth will be 5% this year. China has been on a roll for years. They make stuff. Maybe physical reality is important.
Early on in the Ukr war I got the feeling that the world was turning on the US and west. US, UK, and EU diplomats are snubbed like never before. I get UAE and Saudi confused but look at what just happened. Putin and RU are isolated?
US can't get phone calls returned, UK visit just cancelled. Putin lands and gets the red carpet treatment. Cecil B Demille type greetings. 21 gun salute. Honor guard and president AND 88 year old former president gets off his death bed to hug Putin at the airport. Horse cavalry. Camel cavalry. jets (US made jets?) inject chemicals into exhaust to create the Russian tricolor in the sky. Meanwhile some German diplomat lands and gets treated like a turd on the tarmac. Didn't someone maybe Janet Yeltsin go to China for a meeting and they did not even feed her? She had to fend for herself?
I am just observing reality here. I am not calling good vs evil. The EU is discussing how to use the frozen Russian assets but the international finance people are warning them about what happens next from other investors. Today Russians are the bad guys. Who is next? The Saudis (bone saws and beheadings)? The biggest depository of ill gotten wealth from around the world is the US. Maybe they should move much of it elsewhere?
Russia and China buy and sell stuff on the best terms they can get. They did not set up the international finance systems to benefit them. Not because they are nice but they did not have the chance. The US depends on gaming the system so what are we doing to threaten it? FA and find out.
One good quote from Margin Call at 1 min in. I think the world is going to get fairer and that is not good for us.
https://youtu.be/2f2kGHcdJYU?t=61