I would just warn you before you short-china that the other site has to survive for you to profit from the short.

It has been the fate of most stock markets throughout history to go to zero.

It is only in the globalized order that the luxury of shorting things has existed.

We're going to be going back to a little bit older of a system.

I'm Mary Long, and that's Peter Zahun, a geopolitical analyst and bestselling author.

Bill Mann caught up with Zahun a few weeks ago for a conversation that Motley Fool won subscribers got access to first.

Now we're sharing it with you.

Bill and Zahun discuss the probability that China won't be an economic superpower in a decade,

the status of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency, and a demographic problem that the Fed is closely watching.

So I thought what would be a fun conversation is you know from your work that there are a lot of things that are in the common knowledge, maybe as you know as Mark Twain,

the things that get you in trouble or the things that you believe that ain't so care.

So what I thought would be a fun conversation given your expertise is if I were to tee you up on certain topics and maybe you can talk about things that are common knowledge that aren't so.

That works for me.

Fantastic.

Let's start with number one, the largest or maybe second largest country in the world depending on the day and how it's measured, which is China.

So obviously China is some form of superpower.

What are some of the things that people believe about China or are led to that are widely thought about China that are so.

Technological leader on track to be the largest economy in the world.

Massive manufacturing superpower that doesn't need help from anyone, a military, especially a navy that could take on and defeat the United States on the verge of having the global currency.

All of this is utter horse.

Fair.

Why don't we start with any one of those and actually one of the topics that I was that I was going to bring up was de-dollarization or the brick reserve currency, which I also happen to believe is a pile of nonsense given that it is it is underpinned by two dying commodities countries plus the most indebted country in the world.

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