If we were just going by the "best" currency, i'd go with the Swiss Frank.

Problem is, Germany, Nor Switzerland, Nor the UK has enough money to be the world currency...

and printing more money to get there would just lead to hyper deflation.

Amusingly though, the sharp rise in value of the swiss frank is cauisng higher unemployment.

China is just setting to eventually try and make thier own takeover bid, though I imagine eventually they'd have to greatly loosen their economic controls for that to happen.

China will not stop buying US Bonds though, the reason is that the RMB (Chinese dollar) is not public traded; and they want to keep it that way. The reason is to keep the Chinese dollar artificially undervalue to give the exporter competitive edge. One US Dollar buys 6-7 Chinese dollars of goods; the more undervalue they keep the Chinese currency the more one US dollar can buy. On the flip side, the US dollar is weakening, this causes problem for the Chinese as well, bc now One US Dollar can buy less number of Chinese goods.

Since RMB is not publicly traded, just like Japan (which is publicly traded) the Chinese gov needs to find a way to sell large amount of the Chinese dollar somehow, supply and demand; the more you sell, the cheaper the stuff gets bc the demand would no longer be there when sufficient amount of supply is there.

The way JPN do it is by selling the japanese dollar on the free stock market so Honda and Toyota can get the competitive edge by undervaluing the Japanese dollar.

The way Chinese do it, is by buying bonds all over teh world, USA being the biggest bond issuer; so China buys from USA and became the biggest debt holder.

Got it guys?

There is no other option to the Dollar except the Euro the Euro zones economy is the only economy comparable to US economy (would be bigger if UK joined) aside from China (which is smaller btw) and the only other currency even coming close to the dollar when it comes to reserves yuan is non existant on the global markets 87.5% are Euro and Dollar the other 12.5% are Pounds/Swiss francs/yen and all the other stuff. China cant even hope to have the reserve currency in the next decades.

Have wonder how the heck anyone is going to go: "Hello world!  Welcome to your new FIAT currency".  Are they suddenly going to come up with some currency backed by gold or some other metals, in order to get people to use it?

Will see what happens to China if they halt purchasing T-Bills, or try not to use the dollar in any capacity.  Looking at China's currency to then float on the Forex exchanges, as they decouple their currency to the dollar?  Get ready for equalization and China to slit its own throat in the process.  China has rose on the back of America's debt.

FYI, Germany has just stated they will not bail out Italy which is teetering on default.

Tonight and tomorrow are going to be hell on earth for markets. The market in Tel-Aviv was suspended for the day due to the selloff.

The market collapse is happening tonight and tomorrow.

The Euro is pretty much screwed. There is no reason to keep it when only two reasonably large countries with any economic sense (France, Germany) are using it. Likewise, the USD has been collapsing for years now.

I fear we'll go to a one-world reserve currency which would be the start of a New World Order... But sadly, given leaders' propensity to increase debts, I do not know what the choice is.

So then, that nation in a Africa that is releasing currency backed by gold suddenly becomes the world's currency?  I think it was gold.

Next up, everyone gets paid in Bison bucks, from the Street Fighter movie with Van Damn in it.

Yeah... i'll be watching this develop tonight at work.  Thank god I won't need what I saldy call my "investments" for a good 3 years or so, hope it can build back up by then.

Plus side of the US downgrade... maybe i'll finally be able to get a good interest rate on some short term annual payment bonds.

Couldn't be more accurate to the truth. China has made comments like this for years.

To be a little selfish, I'm looking forward to the collapse ... The bulk of my portfolio was recently converted into cash because I anticipated the debt ceiling debate to be resolved at the last minute, which I thought would create a down market and a lot of buying opportunities. While my prediction was only half correct, the coincidental timing of the European debt crisis worsening may make my timing perfect (regardless of whether it was just because of luck).

Now, my next prediction will likely be as accurate as my previous one (which isn't saying much) but I would anticipate that we will see a week or two of the market struggling, followed by a rudimentary plan being put in place to ease the debt crisis which will cause a short term rally, the plan will fall through because Germany won’t agree with the terms creating another downturn for a week or two, and then a new plan which Germany will agree to will be put in place and over the next 6 to 12 months the markets will recover almost everything that was lost.