I believe what's at stake here isn't just gas prices.
With the push to sanction Russia and boot them off of SWIFT while Germany is still reliant upon Gazprom for 38% of their energy, it's clear that an alternate method of payment is going to be needed. Putin's making moves to setup gold as their standard by dropping their VAT on bullion.
If Germany is using gold bullion for a major chunk of their energy costs, then what do they need to hold on to US dollars for? They'll start either dumping them or converting them to gold... which increases the supply of USD in circulation, which causes a devaluation of the USD, which gives us a bump in inflation especially if we don't have the GDP to soak up the hit.
If it spirals on from there and other energy producers start taking gold, then the "petrodollar" is dead and the USD is no longer the commonly used world currency. Everyone else starts dumping or converting because no one wants to do deals in USD because it's losing value so quickly, and things snowball from there.
And then we get the "wheelbarrow full of $10,000,000 bills to buy a loaf of bread" stories here in the US.
We don't need to ramp up production NOW just to keep prices at the pump down... we need to do it so we've got relevance in the new non-USD-based economy that's about to explode into existence. We don't need to just be self reliant, we need to dominate the oil and gas markets in order to maintain our current standard of living.
I believe what's at stake here isn't just gas prices.
With the push to sanction Russia and boot them off of SWIFT while Germany is still reliant upon Gazprom for 38% of their energy, it's clear that an alternate method of payment is going to be needed. Putin's making moves to setup gold as their standard by dropping their VAT on bullion.
If Germany is using gold bullion for a major chunk of their energy costs, then what do they need to hold on to US dollars for? They'll start either dumping them or converting them to gold... which increases the supply of USD in circulation, which causes a devaluation of the USD, which gives us a bump in inflation especially if we don't have the GDP to soak up the hit.
If it spirals on from there and other energy producers start taking gold, then the "petrodollar" is dead and the USD is no longer the commonly used world currency. Everyone else starts dumping or converting because no one wants to do deals in USD because it's losing value so quickly, and things snowball from there.
And then we get the "wheelbarrow full of $10,000,000 bills to buy a loaf of bread" stories here in the US.
We don't need to ramp up production NOW just to keep prices at the pump down... we need to do it so we've got relevance in the new non-USD-based economy that's about to explode into existence. We don't need to just be self reliant, we need to dominate the oil and gas markets in order to maintain our current standard of living.