“De-dollarizing” the world economy could have dangerous consequences for the United States. The BRICS alliance — originally comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — took a major step toward flexing its communal currency muscle at its recent summit in South Africa, writes ‘The New York Post’.

Six new members joined the organization — Saudi Arabia, Iran, Ethiopia, Egypt, Argentina, and the United Arab Emirates — in an effort to reduce the dollar’s decades-long dominance and end its use as the preferred payment for the one commodity that still dominates global trade: oil.

The dollar’s role as the world’s key reserve currency is the foundation for America’s global leadership.

Most crucially, at a time of unprecedented global conflict, diminishing the dollar’s importance would allow rogue nations such as Iran and Russia to become immune to sanctions in response to geopolitical bad behavior.

Lower demand for the currency might make exports cheaper but it will also reduce the dollar’s purchasing power and undermine confidence in its stability.

As the BRICS summit made clear, the block’s leverage in the oil market has never been greater.

This has given them unprecedented power to finally replace the dollar on the global energy markets with their own domestic currencies.

Take a close look at the selective approach the alliance used to expand its membership.

While the bloc did not provide details about specific admissions criteria, the selection is clearly energy-centric.

Only six out of more than 40 applicant nations were accepted this year — with sizable economies such as Turkey and Indonesia conspicuously left out.

The anti-Western alliance now has six of the world’s top oil producers – Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Brazil, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates.

It’s also home to two of the world’s largest oil importers – China and India.

Although 90% of oil trades are currently conducted in dollars, an increasing number are being handled in Chinese yuan and Russian rubles.

India, for instance, has started paying for Russian oil imports in yuan, and China also began using its yuan to pay Russia for most of its energy imports in the first quarter of this year, according to Reuters.

Saudi Arabia may be new to BRICS, but it’s already colluding with Russia to reduce petroleum production, which has resulted in oil reaching a 10-month high this month.

What’s notable about the BRICS newcomers is that many are authoritarian regimes who are intimately familiar with the power of US sanctions.

Iran, of course, has contended with them for years.

The Saudis — while a crucial US ally — are keen to avoid the “consequences” called for by Biden in October after OPEC+ announced those large production cuts.

Back in 2020, Biden also threatened to make the kingdom a “pariah” over the killing of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

By shutting Washington out of trade and diplomacy, BRICS membership allows rogue nations to upend our ability to “weaponize” the dollar as a tool to punish ‘bad guys’.

The US has employed sanctions for decades, in lieu of military intervention against authoritarian regimes such as Iran, North Korea, and now Russia.

The White House, for instance, seized $300 billion in Russian assets following its invasion of Ukraine.

Biden also removed Russia from SWIFT, the international money transfer system, sending shock-waves to non-western nations at risk of White House ire.

But sanctions, no matter how robust, have proven ineffective. China and India — both of which have yet to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine — have kept Moscow’s energy revenue flowing, helping to finance Putin’s war machine and highlighting the power of BRICS cooperation.

The BRICS already have a significant presence across the global economy.

With a collective population of more than 3 billion and 31.5% of the world’s GDP, they’re a formidable challenger to the G7 block of the world’s top economic superpowers.

The G-7’s share of global GDP, for instance, is currently at 30%, and projected to fall to 27.95 percent in 2027, according to Statista research.

The dominance of the dollar has driven many non-Western nations to join forces and develop a counterweight to Western economic hegemony.

Statistics is a branch of mathematics that deals with collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. Statistics homework problems can be challenging for many students, especially if they lack the necessary skills and concepts. That is the reason why many choose to get statistics help for students. It seems like a more effective way of dealing with an issue at hand. However, there are some common types of statistics problems that can be solved using some basic steps and strategies.

Statistic help for students: examples of problems and solutions

Example 1: Finding the mean and median of a data set

The mean and median are two measures of central tendency that describe the average or typical value of a data set. The mean is calculated by adding up all the values in the data set and dividing by the number of values. The median is the middle value of the data set when it is arranged in ascending or descending order. If there is an even number of values, the median is the average of the middle two values.

To find the mean and median of a data set, we can follow these steps:

• Step 1: Arrange the data in ascending or descending order (optional for finding the mean, but necessary for finding the median).
• Step 2: Add up all the values in the data set and divide by the number of values to get the mean.
• Step 3: Find the middle position of the data set by dividing the number of values by 2. If the result is a whole number, then that position is the median. If the result is a fraction, then round it up to the next whole number and find the value at that position. This is the median if there is an odd number of values. If there is an even number of values, then find the average of the values at that position and the previous position. This is the median.

For example, suppose we have the following data set:

139 143 128 138 149 131 143 133

To find the mean and median, we can do the following:

• Step 1: Arrange the data in ascending order:

128 131 133 138 139 143 143 149

• Step 2: Add up all the values and divide by 8 (the number of values) to get the mean:

(128 + 131 + 133 + 138 + 139 + 143 + 143 + 149) / 8 = 138.25

The mean is 138.25.

• Step 3: Find the middle position of the data set by dividing 8 by 2:

8 / 2 = 4

Since this is a whole number, we look at the value at position 4 and position 5 (the next position) in the ordered data set:

128 131 133 (138) (139) 143 143 149

The values at these positions are 138 and 139. To find the median, we take their average:

(138 + 139) / 2 = 138.5

The median is 138.5.

Example 2: Constructing a frequency table

A frequency table is a table that shows how often each value or category occurs in a data set. It can be used to summarize and display categorical or numerical data. To construct a frequency table, we can follow these steps:

• Step 1: Identify the possible values or categories in the data set.
• Step 2: Count how many times each value or category occurs in the data set.
• Step 3: Record the counts in a table with two columns: one for the values or categories and one for their frequencies.

For example, suppose we have the following data on the GPA of six students:

3.0 3.3 3.1 3.0 3.1 3.1

To construct a frequency table, we can do the following:

• Step 1: Identify the possible values in the data set. In this case, they are 3.0, 3.1, and 3.3.
• Step 2: Count how many times each value occurs in the data set. In this case, 3.0 occurs twice, 3.1 occurs three times, and 3.3 occurs once.
• Step 3: Record the counts in a table with two columns:

This is our frequency table.

These are just two examples of common statistics homework problems and how to solve them. There are many other types of problems that require different methods and techniques, such as finding standard deviation, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, correlation, regression, and more. To learn more about these topics and how to solve them, you can check out some online resources such as Mathway, The Princeton Review, or Math-Drills. You can also consult your textbook, your instructor, or your classmates for more help and practice. Statistics can be a challenging but rewarding subject, and with some effort and guidance, you can master it.

How to find competent statistics help for students

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Apart from that, don’t forget about the guarantees which a reliable service should provide. The more guarantees a service offers, the more secure you will feel placing your order on the website. All in all, finding a service that provides competent statistics assistance will not take you long as there are many companies you can trust. Yet, you need to pay special attention to a number of factors to choose the best service on the market. A company that provides competent assistance with statistics assignments is right on hand. You just need to learn more about what it has to offer.

US firms are barreling towards a giant wall of corporate debt that’s about to mature over the next few years, Goldman Sachs strategists said in a note.

There’s $1.8 trillion of corporate debt maturing over the next two years, Goldman Sachs estimated. Firms could be slammed with higher debt servicing costs as interest rates stay elevated. That could eat into corporate revenue and weigh on the US job market.

The investment bank estimated that $790 billion of corporate debt was set to mature in 2024, followed by $1.07 trillion of debt maturing in 2025. That amounts to $1.8 trillion of debt reaching maturity within the next two years, in addition to another $230 billion that will reach maturity by the end of this year, Goldman strategists said.

The wave of debt that will need to be refinanced could spell trouble for companies, as interest rates have been raised aggressively by the Fed over the last year. The Fed funds rate is now targeted between 5.25%-5.5%, the highest range since 2001.

For every extra dollar spent to service their debt, firms will likely pull back on capital expenditures spending by 10 cents and labor spending by 20 cents, the strategists estimated, a reduction that could weigh down the job market by 5,000 payrolls a month in 2024 and 10,000 payrolls a month in 2025.

Experts have warned of trouble for US corporations as credit conditions tighten. Already, the tally of corporate debt defaults in 2023 has surpassed the total number of defaults recorded last year. As much of $1 trillion in corporate debt could be at risk for default if the US faces a full-blown recession, Bank of America warned, though strategists at the bank no longer see a downturn as likely in 2023.