The King Dollar Myth: The Numbers Tell a Very Different Story
Maneco64 — October 27, 2026
Tuesday, October 27th, 2026. Maneco64, home of alternative economics and contrarian views.
Well, today we're going to look at King Dollar. Is it a reality or a myth?
And I'm going to recommend a really good video, which I'll put here right now, that Francis Hunt made recently, three days ago, where he dissects an interview that Jim Rickards did with a Bitcoin channel.
I think you'll love it. I love this video that Francis Hunt made, and he really rips apart Jim Rickards' view that the dollar is king, that the Treasury market is the place to be, that there's no bond market in China, that they're backward.
And my purpose today, though, is not to rip apart Jim Rickards, even though I'd like to, but it's to look at the numbers, look at the charts, and let you decide whether King Dollar is a reality or a myth.
And of course, by King Dollar, I don't mean the $20 dollars in gold in a $20 gold piece, or the $1 in silver.
I mean these trashy bank notes that are issued on behalf of the Federal Reserve by the Bureau of Engraving, these Federal Reserve notes. That's what I mean.
And it's what actually the late and former Fed Governor John Exter called "I owe you nothings."
And he actually pointed out that it's not just the dollar, the King Dollar since 1971, that are "I owe you nothings," but all fiat currencies.
Anyway, I actually like to thank one of you guys, one of the viewers that sent me these ten $2 Federal Reserve notes. They're crispy and new. Unfortunately, they're not worth as much as this $20.
Before we look at some charts about the dollar versus other currencies, before we actually look at China as well and whether they have a government bond market, I want to look at the dollar index because it's an indicator that people like Jim Rickards, people like Brent Johnson—yes, I said his name—even people like George Gammon, I think the dollar milkshake guys, they always point to the dollar index.
And I've spoken about this many times in the past years.
And I think what we need to do, though, is go back to 1973, and that's when the dollar index was invented or created.
And the reason for that was that the era of fixed exchange rates that we had up until August 15th, 1971—and actually they tried to keep the fixed exchange rates after Nixon closed the gold window, but it didn't work because there's no discipline anymore.
It was everyone for himself.
Each country started printing, and it was the race to the bottom.
And that's why a lot of these fiat currencies, the dollar included, and we're going to look at that, haven't done really well versus gold since 1971.
But what I want to do here is compare the King Dollar, this "I owe you nothing" dollar, to the other "I owe you nothing" currencies.
So, the dollar index basically is a basket of the major European currencies, the Canadian dollar, and the Japanese yen.
And I've added up the euro, which is basically a recent creation. And the euro, of course, as per the dollar index, was made up of the major legacy currencies in Europe, like the Deutsche Mark, French Franc, Dutch Guilder, Italian Lira, and so on.
But yeah, the euro, the Japanese yen, the pound sterling, and the Canadian dollars—and that's by order of how important their weightings are—make up 92.2% of the dollar index.
And back in 1971, of course, the Chinese economy and other economies in the Global South were nowhere to be seen in terms of GDP or trade.
But yet the dollar index doesn't include them.
The GDP of China now is greater than the GDP of the Eurozone, and it's not even in the dollar index.
And if you look at the Chinese yuan versus the dollar, the dollar has dropped quite a bit in the last two years versus the Chinese yuan.
But yeah, so is the dollar really king? Is the dollar index really king?
Because the dollar index was started at 100 back in March of '73. And right now, I think we're just above 101.
So that's 1% in 53 and a half years.
Gold at the time, of course, one ounce of gold used to buy around $85 to $90. Now, as I speak here, we can buy about $4,004.
But what I wanted to show you, even within the dollar index, if we look, for example—and you can do this by going to fxtop.com, and I'm going to put a link to that in the description. This is where you can get these charts.
If you look at, let's say, the dollar versus the Deutschmark, and you can still calculate the Deutschmark because its exchange rate versus the euro was fixed back in, I think, 1999.
So, since August 15th, 1971—and I picked that date because it was a really important date. It was the date where the United States and the world's monetary system crossed the Rubicon, and there's been no way back from August 15th, 1971.
Well, the dollar's down 48% versus the Deutschmark.
So much for King Dollar.
Versus the Swiss franc, it's even worse. The dollar's down 80%.
Versus gold, the dollar is down 99%.
And I would add, and you can do this yourself, I'm not going to do it here. If you do this for all the other currencies versus gold, you'll get more than 90% loss as well.
So, this shows you, in my opinion, that the real king is gold, but let's continue.
Versus the yen, even versus the yen, which is supposed to be collapsing right now, the dollar's down 56% since convertibility was stopped of the dollar into gold.
And the reason I'm doing this is not to bash King Dollar or bash Americans.
This is to warn you in the United States and around the world, because a lot of people still use King Dollar, that it's very dangerous to keep a lot of fiat dollars because they're going to continue to lose value versus real money, i.e. gold.
And it wasn't me who said that gold was money. It was J.P. Morgan when asked what gold was.
He said, "Well, gold is money, everything else is credit."
Why do these people keep pushing this agenda?
And I mean, I've had Jim Rickards on this channel six years ago. I interviewed him. I've read some of his books. He's even got a case for gold.
So, I asked Jim Rickards, "How can you be for gold and at the same time believe that the dollar is king?"
It's impossible because the higher the gold price goes versus the dollar, the less of a king the dollar is.
There's also Currency Wars. So, yeah, I actually recommend these books.
But I think the only thing I can say—people like Jim Rickards and the dollar milkshake people and people who push this agenda that the dollar is king, that Treasuries are the best safe haven, and at the same time they pay lip service to gold.
I think these people have an agenda.
They're trying to protect Wall Street and the fiat dollar. They're trying to protect the deep state.
We know that Jim Rickards admits that he works with the CIA. I don't know about Brent Johnson and other guys.
So, that's why I'm warning you, not because I want to bash Jim Rickards or Brent Johnson. It's because I don't want you to buy into this narrative.
And the other thing I wanted to talk to you about—and I had Luke Gromen on, who's really objective about the dollar, and he's an American. He hasn't bought into the milkshake theory.
I'm going to put a link to an interview I did with him recently. I highly recommend it.
And one thing he mentioned to me that I hadn't really looked closely at is the United States' net international investment position, or NIIP.
And what he told me is that the U.S.'s net international investment position was around negative $23 trillion.
And I've looked through here on ChatGPT, and this is what it says here.
If you don't understand what this means, the United States has by far the world's largest negative net international investment position, meaning that foreign investors own substantially more American assets than Americans own foreign assets.
The NIIP measures the difference between U.S. assets abroad—foreign stocks, bonds, businesses, real estate, and other investments owned by American residents—versus foreign-owned assets in the U.S.: American stocks, Treasury bonds, corporate debt, businesses, and other assets owned by foreign residents.
So yes, United States citizens, or Americans, own just under $47 trillion of foreign assets, $46.97 trillion, but foreigners own $69.39 trillion of U.S. assets.
The net international investment position of the U.S. is minus $22.42 trillion.
And the reason I'm talking about this is that a lot of people like Jim Rickards, Brent Johnson, and others in the dollar milkshake world say that foreigners will rush to buy dollars because they owe a lot in dollars and they don't have any dollars.
But according to this, foreigners are net long $22.42 trillion.
So keep that in mind.
Hopefully this will help you decide whether you think King Dollar is a reality or a myth.
I'm leaving it up to you. I'm giving you the numbers.
The other thing I wanted to talk about is China.
And again, not trying to bash the U.S. or King Dollar, even though I don't think it's king.
I'm not trying to cheerlead for China. I'm just trying to paint the reality for you so you can make sure that you protect your savings and your wealth.
Well, Jim Rickards comes out and says, "Well, there's no government bond in China. The yuan or renminbi will never be a reserve currency. It's going to take decades. There's no government bond market in China. There's no repo market. There's no rule of law."
Even though in '08 none of the bankers on Wall Street went to jail.
I see that in China, when people in the financial sector or any other sector commit massive frauds, they don't only get jail; sometimes they get capital punishment.
So I'm not too sure what Jim Rickards meant by the rule of law.
And I checked on ChatGPT, and you can check it yourself. And ChatGPT has the sources. You can click on the sources.
I asked ChatGPT, is there a functioning government bond market in China with a repo market?
And this is the answer I got.
Yes, China has a fully functioning government bond market and a large, sophisticated repo, or repurchase agreement, market.
In fact, China's repo market is central to how the People's Bank of China, or PBOC, manages liquidity in its banking system.
It says here, as well, China has one of the world's largest bond markets, second only to the United States.
Its principal government-related debt instruments include:
Number one, Chinese government bonds, CGB, sovereign debt issued by China's Ministry of Finance, comparable to U.S. Treasuries.
And I checked that also. I think they have about $6.5 trillion equivalent outstanding.
And they've got local government bonds issued by provincial and municipal governments.
So, they even have a muni market, how the Americans call their municipal bond markets.
And they've got policy bank bonds issued by institutions such as the China Development Bank, Agricultural Development Bank of China, and Export-Import Bank of China.
These are not sovereign bonds, but are important high-quality collateral in China's financial system.
China has an established sovereign yield curve, including 2-, 5-, 10-, 30-year government bonds and even longer maturities.
And Jim Rickards said that the rising yields and dropping prices of Treasuries is a sign that people need dollars and that Treasuries are still a safe haven.
Even though, as Francis noted, the 30-year bond price has gone down like 50% in the last four or five years.
And actually, Chinese 10-year government bond yields and 30-year government bond yields are going down, which means their prices are going up.
There's a lot going on politically, geopolitically.
We've got the midterms in about a week. Well, in exactly a week.
We've got elections in Israel today. I don't think that really is going to change much in terms of the war against Iran.
And yeah, we've seen oil up and down. Brent is still—spot Brent is still around $111.
Gold is right around $4,000. It's just above $4,000 right now.
Silver, yes, it's getting bashed around, unfortunately.
It's still above $50. It's at $52.82 right now, down over 100 cents, down 2%.
I don't know why. I guess there's a lot of paper out there.
And with that, I'm going to wish you all a very good day.
Take care. Bye.
