Hence, China's interest in Taiwan and why U.S. circles the ships around it... world's largest gold reserve.

It will be interesting to see how crypto currency and BitCoin fits into this. China doesn't seem keen on it, but it will be hard to stop completely. The U.S. will have choices to make in regards to petro dollars... go after the China's and Russia's of the world and/or go after cryptos- or in a twist - accept and be friendly to the emerging cryptos.

There is a word of caution for countries that go off USD petro, though... pretty soon their currency turns into an inflationary disaster like VZ's. Blame the CIA or is it simply bad economic policy? is a different discussion altogether.

Interesting post. Cheers!