Superbubble Basics

You are confused. You might also be skint. And it’s not just you, the world is broke. Now everyone’s angry. So what the f*ck is going on? 

‘It’s the currency, stupid’.

Here’s what’s happening as I understand it.

The world looks crazy and chaotic and dangerous these days. But behind the noise (of Brexit and trade wars and Trump and yellow vests and red hats), something bigger and more interesting is happening.

You can probably feel the energy shift.

Most people know that things are going wrong economically. But it’s hard to say exactly what.

Superbubble is about economic and geopolitical events that are era-defining and life-changing. 

A tectonic shift in the world’s currency system is well underway. This are not being talked about plainly or accurately by the professional bullsh*t industry (aka most elite media, financial media and social media).

They failed to tell you anything useful before the great financial crisis of 2008.

And they are failing again. This time in not helping ordinary people understand and prepare for the next global debt crisis

I aim to do better.

The next financial crisis will confuse and frighten millions of people. Maybe billions.

In order to not be one of those people, it is worth taking a little time to understand a few basic things about the international monetary system. So you can see the direction of events as the current system ends, and what happens next.

The system is huge and pervasive. This makes it more difficult to see and understand. Because we are so used to it, its has  become invisible, and now seems normal. It is not normal. 

The international currency system is also difficult to understand because people are distracted. All the time. Distracted by gadgets that spew everyone’s opinion of everything into our small grey lumps of primate brain.

No wonder you are confused. And angry. And broke et cetera. 

No wonder so few can see that the global currency system is breaking down.


We are seeing one of the biggest shifts in modern economic history. These changes will hit the English-speaking world hardest. 

Why? Because, since 1922 the world’s financial system has been based on paper ‘promises’ created in New York and London. The British pound was the world’s reserve currency until 1944. Then the US dollar took over. At that time foreigners with a lot of dollars could swap them for gold, but as the US started running out of gold they ended that deal. This happened in 1971, there is more on it here.  

In the short term the ability to create paper (and now digital) promises for the world’s stuff was an incredible deal for the US and UK. However;

In the long run it has destroyed the productive parts of their economies. Turning them into societies who can only consume more than they produce aka ‘consumer societies’. 

This system is unhealthy, unstable and unsustainable. But because the English-speaking world has become so used to this state of affairs that it now looks permanent and normal. 

But it is neither. For reasons I go into elsewhere. 

The global financial system rests upon abstract currency tokens called US dollars. I call it the US dollar Superbubble.

If the amount of these tokens does not increase the entire system collapses.

This system is inherently unstable and almost crashes every few. It almost crashed in 1929, 1968, 1971, and 1998. It nearly collapsed in 2008 due to too much debt. The solution then was to create more debt.

I don’t think it will survive another near miss. 


Currently, a large percentage of the world’s wealth is *stored* in US dollars. The problem is that the US dollar is a purely abstract currency created out of thin air.

It is very easy to create these claims, so too many have been created. 

This makes it totally unsuitable as a long term store of value. Every dollar is a promise of something. Obviously, it is a lot easier to promise something, than to actually provide it. 

Unfortunately, far more US promises of ‘something’ have been issued than can be fulfilled by our planet’s finite resources. 

The international dollar system is unstable and unsustainable because In it: currency = debt. Debt issued by the United States is held as an asset by foreign nations.

This is not viable because:
debts means something is owed
• assets are something owned

This is a huge difference. Especially when the debt is issued by a powerful nation with a history of not paying its creditors back.

US dollars are not wealth, they are claims on wealth. On a global scale, the panicked realisation of the difference will look like an enormous financial crash, as millions try to get *out* of the currency into real stuff.  

Europeans and now the Chinese, and Russia and oil states have been thinking about how to escape the dollar system for a long time.


Enormous changes are happening. But it is very hard for ordinary people to get an accurate overview. My view: this is partly because the world’s financial media is centred in New York and London.

Maybe there are direct political efforts to disguise the nature of our currency system (conspiracy alert!). Or perhaps it is humanity’s innate, inbuilt blindspots. Upton Sinclair (born 1878) wrote:



The transition to a new global currency system is likely to happen via an enormous market crash. That’s how these things usually happen.

If so, most people won’t have a clue until it’s all over. Which will be too late. So I aim to cover these changes in ways that ordinary people can follow. Short version:

Understand the end of the US dollar as world reserve currency, and the rest of 2019 will make a lot more sense.

I find the story of the US dollar Superbubble extremely interesting and very useful. I hope you will too. If you find it plausible you can take whatever action you see fit. This is 100% definitely not investment advice.

Anyway, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading. Subscribe below if you want more. You’ll also get emails, infographics, and maybe some printable cut-out-and-keepables.