I tire of hearing lying pricks like Obama and Santorum trying to scare us with Iran the boogeyman. It ain’t about Iran building a bomb. It’s that Iran wants to sidestep the petrodollar.
Which at some point will lead to bombs.
It isn’t only Iran. Previous administrations that have tried to do abandon the petrodollar: Hussein in Iraq and Khadafi in Libya.
Here’s a rundown of current attempts to sidestep the dollar.
As one of an ever dwindling number of American farmers, the artificial value of the dollar due to political gamemanship has done little to help and a lot to hurt. While I did get subsidized fuel, fertilizer, etc. out of the deal, I also had sharp penciled economists forcing the latest in mechanization and methods down my throat, the products of which are all owned and supplied by a few major corporations, and obtainable only by signing a life away to a few friendly lending institutions, freshly stocked with free money, courtesy of the Federal Reserve and our Treasury Department.
Failure to comply with this plan meant failure to survive econmically.
So don’t ask me to cheerlead the war to keep the scam alive (aka the war on terror, drugs, etc.).
We should be paid for what we do, not who we are, same as everyone else.
Those that choose to be suck-asses or scam artists should not be rewarded.
And in the end, won’t be.
heads or tails we all lose
March 25, 2012 9:24 AM
cbs
For generations now, storekeepers have been making change by taking bills and coins out of the cash register drawer. Now many experts say changing technology is nickel-and-diming old-fashioned cash out of existence. So is cash a relic of a bygone era? Our Cover Story is reported by Lee Cowan:
It’s what the wallet was invented for, to carry cash. After all, there was a time when we needed cash everywhere we went, from filling stations to pay phones. Even the tooth fairy dealt only in cash.
But money isn’t just physical anymore. It’s not only the pennies in your piggy bank, or that raggedy dollar bill.
Money is also digital – it’s zeros and ones stored in a computer, prompting some economists to predict the old-fashioned greenback may soon be a goner.
“There will be a time – I don’t know when, I can’t give you a date – when physical money is just going to cease to exist,” said economist Robert Reich.
Economists like Reich say the demise of cash has been happening ever since our financial fortunes could first be told by a piece of plastic with a magnetic strip.
That was half a century ago – and now? “95 percent of the transactions in America, or more, have nothing to do with physical pieces of paper or coins,” Reich said.
Think about it. Parking meters, taxis, tolls, even Girl Scout cookies don’t require cash anymore, all proof (argue some) that cash’s days are numbered.
“Everyone thinks cash is so simple and so easy and so fast and so secure. It’s NONE of those things,” said author David Wolman. In his new book, “The End of Money,” he argues the biggest knock against cash is that it’s costly.
“It’s really expensive to move it, store it, secure it, inspect it, shred it, redesign it, re-supply it, and round and round we go!” Wolman said.
more
the point is not about the physical dollar (or poker chips or wampum beads or what have you) it’s about the US dollar as the global monetary standard against which all other currencies are valued. So, at it’s simplest, if I’m a German who wants to purchase Saudi oil, for example, my currency must first be converted into US dollar based credit to effect the purchase and then, at the seller’s end, those US dollars will need to undergo conversion once again back into the local currency or, alternatively, kept in reserve for future domestic international purchases. One or all of these cash conversions enriches the US government through the esoteric volatility of the currency exchanges for every drop of oil sold anywhere in the world. It’s a very, very big business for the US and its bankers which countries and individuals have toyed with it at their great and continuing peril (See Iraq and Strauss Kahn, for instance). When Iran designated the Euro as it’s medium of exchange for it’s new oil bourse – the ramifications of that decision are far reaching, placing the country at risk militarily and expediting efforts to eliminate the euro from the world stage altogether.
I suppose, setting aside for a moment the idea that Iran’s intention was just to poke America in the eye, a more rational explanation would be that, given the US embargo, no benefit arises for Iran in accepting or warehousing US dollars. Why should they sell their oil for cash they can’t use. They’d be better off accepting pokers chips – if they were a nation of poker players – which they are not. The embargo affects those Euro purchases, too, but to a much lesser extent. Many countries and international corporations have found ways to skirt the embargo (China and Russia most notably). Additionally, the US has no access to the internal machinations of European banks. It can’t accurately track the movement of Euros around the world or keep a handle on who is selling what to whom – issues of some importance to Iran right now, one assumes.
As an aside, I recall the breathless reports of the discovery of vast stores of American dollars discovered in an Iraqi garden shed or, alternatively, according to varied accounts, behind a wall in some house, and billed as Saddam Hussein’s secret stash of ‘walking about’ money. Right. That’s it. That’s the ticket. My goodness, we’re media innocents, are we not? By the way, all or most of that cash almost immediately disappeared again. Apparently the 700 billion or so bux became somebody else’s walking about money but, never mind, you know what they say. It’s war. S— happens. Wars cost money. It’s probably unpatriotic to ask about this stuff. 12 billion in that last story? Oops, my bad. Make that 18 billion. Billion. Schmillion. Who can possibly keep track of so many bunches of paper?
The CIA overthrew him in 1953 because he was asking for 50% of the oil profits from the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC Later BP)the same that Saudi’s were getting from ARAMCO. This was a fight about the price of oil. Has anything changed? If Iran offered long term oil contracts to American refiners at say $65 a barrel, I doubt there would be any talk of bombing Iran.
moan about the dollar being a fiat currency.
The truth is, as the only monetary unit that can be used to buy oil, the dollar is backed not by gold but by oil, giving it legitimacy that other currencies don’t enjoy.
It is for this reason that other nations have bought our treasuries and as a result, given us a free ride.
We print dollars (actually create them with computers out of nothing) and get real goods in return, while others hold our paper.
The rest of the world faces a conumdrum. 2/3 of the world’s money is denominated in dollars. Selling dollars means someone else is still buying them, furthering dollar legitimacy.
The dollar is also backed by the largest war machine on the planet.
One crack in the armor, one hint of weakness and the whole thing could come crashing down.
I did inhale.
eom
If I had access and absolutely nothing better to do, I’d delight in uploading the accounts of America’s old BFF, Ahmed Chalabi to my Quickbooks Pro. If anybody’s seriously looking for a missing Iraqi billion or few, I betcha that could be an awfully good place to start. Just sayin’. But then, of course, war is h—, etc. Not that he’d actually steal or embezzle or anything.
Here.
South Africa will this week take some initial steps to unseat the US dollar as the preferred worldwide currency for trade and investment in emerging economies.
Thus, the nation is expected to become party to endorsing the Chinese currency, the renminbi, as the currency of trade in emerging markets.
This means getting a renminbi-denominated bank account, in addition to a dollar account, could be an advantage for African businesses that seek to do business in the emerging markets.
The move is set to challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. This, experts say, is the latest salvo in the greatest worldwide currency war since the 1930s.
(more at the link)
I did inhale.
BRIC
You know, when I was a kid and it was still possible to frequent restaurants where the booths had little nickelodeons where you could choose from a menu of tunes, we could regale ourselves into fits of laughter by adding “under the sheets” to each title. You know “Great Balls of Fire under the sheets”; “Don’t be Cruel under the sheets”; “Whole Lot o Shakin’ Goin’ On under the sheets” etc.
Well, apart from inadvertently dating myself – argh – my point is that without adding “trying to destroy BRIC” to many global economic reports these days equals missing the West’s intentions entirely.