From Atlantic Center to Triangulation: A Genealogical Analysis of Global Liquidity Architecture (2009-2026)

Abstract This paper argues that the post-2008 dollar system evolved from an Atlantic-centered Eurodollar configuration into a functionally distributed but hierarchically integrated architecture across three sovereign nodes: U.S. liquidity backstop capacity, China's balance-sheet stabilization, and Japan's duration absorption and funding transmission. The core claim is that this shift was not a deliberate design but a structural response to incompatible constraints revealed in a sequence of stress episodes—China's 2009 credit expansion, the 2013 taper shock, China's 2015/16 FX defense, and Japan's 2016 yield-curve-control formalization—combined with U.S. consolidation of pricing infrastructure via the LIBOR-to-SOFR transition. The paper extends global liquidity-hierarchy accounts by adding institutional legibility: markets absorb extreme intervention when it is embedded in recognizable legal-procedural architectures, and resist it when intervention lacks a stable public "policy signature." This legibility gap explains persistent China-system frictions despite functional stabilization. The analysis is diagnostic, not predictive: it clarifies how the triangular configuration operates under stress, how new instruments (stablecoins, T-bill collateralization) modify its dynamics near the Critical Liquidity Path, and why Europe remains systemically important primarily as collateral terrain rather than a functional core node. JEL Classification: F33, F36, E58, G15 Keywords: triangulation, institutional legibility, dollar hierarchy, collateral sovereignty, yield curve control, global liquidity