Or so Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's story about the alleged Yellow Peril to the dollar would have us believe.

But here's another way to look at it. The great counterfeiting machine in DC has been printing dollars at an unimaginable rate, and browbeating China and other countries into accepting them for real goods.

China also wanted to keep its currency in lockstep with the dollar, in an imitation of the gold standard, to prevent the US from gaining advantages through monetary depreciation, so it bought and held even more dollars.

Now, naturally, China is denounced for not kowtowing to the Emperor. It is pressured to increase the value of its currency against the dollar to reward US exporters, and threatened with tariffs and other trade barriers.Those wily Orientals say No, and if the US tries more mercantilist trade attacks, they hint that they may have to sell some of their vast pile of dollars and Treasury bonds.

This is an outrage, according to the US and the establishment media. But the fault lies with DC. Its massive inflation, deficits, and spending have set the world up for a financial crisis.

Naturally, the US will try to blame everyone and anyone else. But the fundamental villains are the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the banksters, and the Wall Street elites: the empire of the reserve currency.

What to do? Ron Paul knows, as did Ludwig von Mises, Henry Hazlitt, Murray N. Rothbard, and others. Stop the printing presses; cut the spending; balance the budget; and establish a gold standard.

Seem impossible? The alternative is international chaos, poverty, and perhaps world war. (Thanks to Chris Rhoades)