As Hemingway famously put it, going bankrupt happens in two stages, first slowly but then suddenly.
So the US dollar hegemony will continue its slow decline for a good while, but once a tipping point is reached, the bottom will drop out of that market and things will go bad extremely quickly.
Precisely where that tipping point is will be the literal trillion dollar question. I don’t think anyone will be able to accurately predicted it, just like no one was able to accurately predict the 2008 subprime collapse. There were people who suspected and bet against that, but none of them would have been able to honestly say they knew when it was going to happen.
We are in a very similar situation again now, with everyone broadly agreeing that the US is in terminal decline, but no one is able to say when and how the tipping point is reached.
My personal theory is that the US government will initiate a hot war against China once they see that tipping point in the rear view mirror and know that the collapse is imminent. Because unlike 2008, China will not bail them out, and at that stage, a massive hot war will basically be the only card the US government has left to play to avoid the total collapse of their entire financial system.
China also expects this, which is why they are actually preparing for the coming war.
Yeah, the worse the US is doing, and the better China is doing is not decreasing the chance of a hot war, but accelerating it.
Many people don't accept that because they think that it is too "unrealistic", but nothing is too unlikely in this world.
The better China is doing relatively to them (like now), the more they are going to accelerate the war synthesis (shown empirically),
When China had 10% of today's economic power and the US was the world policeman
the war wasn't even in the picture.
Also, their elites and "intellectuals" are still living in that fairy tale land when the US is still the same country demographically that it was in WW2 when the war actually benefited them in the end in terms of industrial productivity growth, middle-class growth, innovation, social and political unity, and general prosperity.
They don't realize that the current young bartenders and influencers can't even fathom working in factories or studying engineering.
Also, they don't realize that the racial and ethnic makeup was very different, political and social polarization is much stronger, and 50% of people think that a civil war is likely in the next few years, patriotism, religion, morality, are at all times low, crime and hatred at highs.
So, not only would a hot war against China get them out of their general decline, but it would directly lead to civil unrest at home leading to the premature collapse by 5-10 years.
But, at this point, if you are a US elite decision-maker, I guess it still makes sense for you to at least try getting out of this with a bang.
I guess "you miss 100% shots you don't take", if you are some US oligarch, you would at least try to preserve your future in this way.
