Obsidian Sync 2024-10-21 17:45:08

content/daily-notes/2024-10-21.md

@@ -31,3 +31,9 @@ On Productivity:
 On Shale Oil:
 
 > The Marcellus is just one of several such rock formations around America, from the oil-rich Bakken shale in Montana and North Dakota to the Permian basin, endowed with both oil and gas, in Texas and New Mexico. The revolution in tapping their hard-to-reach hydrocarbons got under way in the latter half of the 20th century as companies and government researchers worked to combine hydraulic fracturing, or fracking (the injection of specialised liquids to open cracks in rocks), and horizontal drilling. As they honed these techniques in the early 2000s, production surged. Now, America produces some 13m barrels per day of crude oil and 3bn cubic metres per day of natural gas, making it the world’s biggest producer of both.
+
+On the yuan displacing the dollar:
+
+> But the twin declines are not interlinked enough to dent the dollar’s standing. On the IMF data, the dollar’s share of reserves has fallen back only roughly to where it was in 1995. And it has not been China absorbing its share, or even the euro, which Europe uses for most of its own trade and is the dominant currency in parts of Africa. Rather, it is, as one joke goes, other currencies called “dollar” or “krone”: those in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. “They are the currencies of small, open, well managed, in the main inflation-targeting economies,” says Mr Eichengreen.
+> 
+They are also mostly America’s allies, making it hard to sustain an argument that the fall in reserve share says much about lost Western hegemony. And among remaining official holdings of dollars, three-quarters are owned by governments with a military tie to America, says Colin Weiss of the Federal Reserve. Strikingly, note Mr Arslanalp and his colleagues, the yuan’s share of international reserves has shrunk since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, sparking American sanctions and much speculation that countries would jettison the dollar for fear of similar treatment.