The soaring US dollar is causing mounting strains for the global financial system and ultimately threatens to set off a full-blown banking crisis in emerging markets, the world’s top’s economic watchdog has warned.

“We have all the symptoms of a dollar shortage,” said Hyun Song Shin, chief economist at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

The warning came as the closely-watched dollar index (DXY) appeared close to breaking through key resistance levels to a 14-year high, a move likely to trigger a stampede into the US currency as hedge funds and momentum traders join the chase.

The danger is that the powerful and immediate effects of financial tightening will “swamp” any trade benefits for the rest of the world from Donald Trump’s stimulus plans and a stronger dollar, even for countries that export heavily to the US. “It may not be very good news for anyone,” Mr. Shin told a specialist forum at the London School of Economics.

The BIS estimates that dollar debt outside US jurisdiction - and therefore lacking a direct lender of last resort - has risen five-fold to $10 trillion over the past 15 years.  The great unknown is what will happen to China, where corporate debt has mushroomed to 145% of GDP.

Gosh, do I wish I’d taken my own advice and gone long on fossil fuels, short on renewables in the run up to the U.S. presidential election. I would have even bigger a reason to celebrate the Donald Trump victory than I do already.

Make no mistake, the Donald Trump presidency represents the biggest blow yet to the Great Global Warming Swindle.

Climategate was merely an amuse-gueule. This is the main event because it won’t just involve cross words in the blogosphere but actual deeds.

Specifically, those deeds will involve:

*the U.S. withdrawing from the COP21 climate agreement (aka “Clexit”);

*the effective dismantling of the Environmental Protection Agency by the able and sensible Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute;

*much laxer federal regulations on matters like fracking, oil pipelines, and fossil fuels generally;

*an end to the massive subsidies paid to renewables such as the bat-chomping, bird-slicing eco-crucifixes which the President-elect is so right to hate.

For the Greenies, all this must seem like Armageddon come early.  But wait, there’s more!

Jerusalem, Israel. The most unhappy person in America as Donald Trump won a remarkable historic presidential election victory was the man on the second floor of the White House.  His legacy is about to lie in shatters.

Obama’s presidency will go down in history as a domestic and foreign policy disaster.

Under Obama, we have witnessed an America too progressively concentrating on changing society for the worse.

Safe spaces got preference over a safe America. Toilets for people who don’t know if they are male or female make the headlines rather than forty million Americans on food stamps. When petty criminals get shot the police are accused of criminality, but murderous illegal immigrants are protected in sanctuary cities.

Trump got it right. The people want to get America back on track, a track based on traditional values, common sense, hard work, security and patriotism. It’s a society based on the same values we love and need in Israel for our welfare and safety. 

Obama and his supporters loved talking about history. His victory was historic. They were on the right side of history. History was an inevitable arc that bent their way.

The tidal force of demographics had made the old America irrelevant. Any progressive policy agenda was now possible because we were no longer America. We Were Obamerica. A hip, happening place full of smiling gay couples, Muslim women in hijabs and transgender actors. We were all going to live in a New York City coffee house and work at Green Jobs and live in the post-national future.

This was Obama's America. And there was no going back.

But there is no right side of history. There is only the side we choose.

The Obama era was permanent. It was history. Now it is history.

In one of the immortal lines of Godfather 2, mafia boss Michael Corleone discusses the fate of his brother, who betrayed him, with his enforcer.

“I don’t want anything to happen to him while my mother is alive,” Corleone said.

Message received.

The brother was murdered after their mother’s funeral.

Last week it was reported that the Obama administration has delivered a message to the Palestinian Authority. The administration has warned the PA that the US will veto any anti-Israel resolution brought before the UN Security Council before the US presidential elections on November 8.

Message received.

Open season on Israel at the Security Council will commence November 9. The Palestinians are planning appropriately.

Israel needs to plan, too. Israel’s most urgent diplomatic mission today is to develop and implement a strategy that will outflank President Barack Obama in his final eight weeks in power.

Surging rates on dollar Libor contracts are rapidly tightening conditions across large parts of the global economy, incubating stress in the credit markets and ultimately threatening overvalued bourses.

Three-month Libor rates – the benchmark cost of short-term borrowing for the international system – have tripled this year to 0.88% as inflation worries mount. 

Fear that the US Federal Reserve may have to raise rates uncomfortably fast is leading to an acute dollar shortage, draining global liquidity.

 “The Libor rate is one of few instruments left that still moves freely and is priced by market forces. It is effectively telling us that that the Fed is already two hikes behind the curve,” says Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank.  “Something more fundamental is at work. The cost of global capital is going up, full stop.”

“This is highly significant and is our number one concern. Our allocation model is now 100% in cash. This is a warning signal for the market and it happens extremely rarely,” he says.