美元即将遭受崩溃吗？

While world currency markets appear to have stabilized as investors await a final decision on a settlement for Greece’s debt crisis, some voices on Wall Street are raising the alarm about a possible collapse in the value of the U.S. dollar and an ensuing round of destructive devaluations by America’s major trading partners.

One of the most outspoken supporters of this view is James Rickards, a senior managing director at Tangent Capital, which provides investment banking to alternative asset managers like hedge funds. Rickards has just published a book calledCurrency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis, which predicts a dramatic drop in the value of the U.S. dollar.

Rickards maintains that the cause of the dollar’s decline is the Federal Reserve’s use of so-called quantitative easing to reduce interest rates. The Fed has bought more than $2 trillion worth of government bonds since 2009, in effect creating new money.

Rickards says in the book that when the dollar starts to fall, it will soon turn into a rout, which will be followed by competitive devaluations by rival countries seeking to preserve their position in world trade. “The growth of globalization, derivatives and leverage have made financial panic impossible to contain,” Rickards says.

Rickards notes that there has already been a few signs of the expected currency war, such as Brazil’s efforts to reduce the value of the real and Korea’s efforts to impose capital controls.

虽然美联储的金钱印刷没有导致美国的预期通胀爆发。有些人预期，它确实在将货币与中国和泰国等货币挂钩的国家中送最高的通货膨胀。2010年夏天，中国结束了挂钩美元，而Rickards则表示这是美国货币政策的结果。

去年在一次采访中说that last week’s surge in the price of gold over $1,700 an ounce was due to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke’s hints that he would opt for more quantitative easing in the future if the economy continues to drag.

Rickards预测，当灰尘在货币战争中清除时，黄金的价值将达到7,000美元，并说这是返回金标准的好理由，该标准由Richard Nixon于1971年被遗弃。

“伯南克所有人都说他们要去更多的金钱印刷，这就是获得黄金的所有东西，”Rickard说。“我喜欢说黄金永远不会改变 - 一盎司总是一个盎司 - 发生的事情是美元下降，购买更多的购买量盎司。”

Rickards is mindful that predicting the collapse of the dollar right now is complicated by the fact that money seems to be pouring out of Europe and Asia into U.S. Treasuries and American assets still have the protective sheen of a safe harbor.

但他估计不会永远持续，将这种情况与滑雪胜地比较，其中雪已经建立在威胁雪崩的山腰上。“现在，当发生这种情况时，你会责怪雪花或山的不稳定状况吗？”里克斯说。“导致雪崩的雪花是什么？我不知道，但我知道它正在下雪，我知道雪崩即将到来。“

Of course, there is a chorus of economists led by Paul Krugman who are happy to point out that the gold standard was largely responsible for the Great Depression in some countries such as Britain.

Rickards agrees but says it was not the standard itself but the price at which gold was pegged that caused the difficulties. Britain had doubled its money supply during World War I, he says in a detailed history of the era, and by going back on the gold standard at the old price, it cut its money supply in half, which caused a 10-year depression.

Rickards favors adoption of what he calls a flexible gold standard. Not flexible in terms of the price of gold, but flexible in the sense that the Fed would be able to print money at times of crisis to ease unemployment.

Unlike Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, he does not favor the abolition of the Federal Reserve. He says that the U.S. could avoid a currency war by adopting what he calls the King Dollar approach, which is his name for the policy adopted by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker under Ronald Reagan to rein in inflation by raising interest rates to double digit levels.

Rickards derides the idea of adopting some other currency to replace the dollar as the world reserve currency. The Chinese and Russians have suggested using Special Drawing Rights (SDR) issued by the International Monetary Fund instead of the dollar to denominate world trade.

“If you don’t believe in American power, if you think America is the problem and not the solution, then you would probably favor something like the SDR,” he says.