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A comment on The Global Dollar Short Squeeze. Parent comment

Re:The Global Dollar Short Squeeze by selectodude on Friday April 10, 2020 @01:27AM (#22830245)
Saudi needs dollars to buy everything else since they make nothing and import everything. Everybody else will take their dollars, so it’s a worthwhile thing to have around for them. Sure, you can’t buy a kebab on the streets of Jeddah with them, but the chicken that kebab was made with was almost certainly bought in some way using those aforementioned petrodollars.
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Re:The Global Dollar Short Squeeze by neilwilson on Friday April 10, 2020 @04:27AM (#22831081)
How does the seller selling the kebabs in riyal get the chicken given they only earn riyal?

You need somebody who wants riyal for dollars. Why would the chicken seller not take the riyal since that helps his customers and do the FX magic themselves? "Local currency sales" is what marketing men recommend. It's just the latest form of vendor financing.

Who wants riyal for dollars. People who buy kebabs in Saudi. Those who live and work there.

As I said the dollars are useless in Saudi, because that's not the local currency stuff you need day to day is priced in.

The point again is that in aggregate you can buy things in the currency you have and you can sell things for the currency you want. The financial system smooths the path to that deal - for a price.

As anybody with a Paypal account and who trades internationally understands.

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Re:The Global Dollar Short Squeeze by simonh on Friday April 10, 2020 @09:40AM (#22832871)
>How does the seller selling the kebabs in riyal get the chicken given they only earn riyal?

They buy the dollars they need to buy the chicken off the Saudi national bank for Riyal. That’s their job. Controlling that rate is a primary way the SA government manages their domestic economy.

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