After the BRICS meeting in Kazan, a picture of a bundle of fake BRICS banknotes began to circulate online. Right up to a picture of Putin holding one, like a mobster holds a cigar.
The intent was mocking. But while the end goal of the kind of paper that rappers shove into g-strings is still a long way off - in the background, the bureaucratic elves of BRICS were chipping away at the dense, dull, paperwork of a new payments system.
This was never going to be a big bang. More like popping the world’s biggest roll of bubble wrap.
After all, like the nuclear secrets themselves, the mechanism for making a new international method for the settlement of accounts is an obscure and technical thing. And it is eighty years since anyone tried to do it from scratch.
Few people are better placed to be the Robert Oppenheimer to this kind of project than Warwick Powell.
Powell is Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology and the author of "China, Trust and Digital Supply Chains”, and "Dynamics of a Zero Trust World".
At his Substack, he blogs about China, trade, and the dense subterranean plumbing network that underlies the global payments system.
This week, he joins us… to explain how to make a new global currency.
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