Iran to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/HD18Ad02.html Might be significant.
Interesting article.....and is correct: The commentary suggested Washington seeks a regime change in Iran with a view to establishing American hegemony in the Middle East. Gennady Yefstafiyev, a former general in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, wrote: "The US's long term goals in Iran are obvious: to engineer the downfall of the current regime; to establish control over Iran's oil and gas; and to use its territory as the shortest route for the transportation of hydrocarbons under US control from the regions of Central Asia and the Caspian Sea bypassing Russia and China. This is not to mention Iran's intrinsic military and strategic significance." Venezuela is next....and Russia is positioning itself with Venezuela as we speak...as is Spain...by providing miltary capability...as the US will not....
Maybe your bank could be persuaded to speed up their loan approval process if there was an (unspoken) threat -- "our intelligence says that Osama Bin Forgotten is hiding in your head office and we might not be able to protect you from him unless you lend us some more money to pay last weeks interest bill"
Good point OS. I could shake the dust off OBL before he reaches his useby date. My loan approval was slowed down by passover ... my fault entirely, I should have thought of it earlier.
Any reason that pricing a commodity in one nominal fiat currency versus the other makes any difference at all? No technical economic reasons have yet been posted since the first page. Only an assertion that "USD must be held", apparently unwillingly, to pay for oil. Again that makes no sense: if a currency is desirable to hold (i.e. interest or stability) people can hold that on its own merits and if another is used for payment and the FX market is liquid enough, what's the big deal? Let's remember also that a huge amount of oil is sold "OTC", as party to party contracts and not as physical settlement on the exchanges. There is no reason these can't be made in any mutually acceptable currency and it is likely that some such agreements are made in euros too. Japan imports all of its oil and oil isn't priced in Yen on overt currency exchanges. Their yen has been pushed down and pushed down by their central bank with 0% interest rates. (The real source of the global liquidity bubble is made in Tokyo, not the Federal Reserve). And yet, they haven't needed an aircraft carrier battle group.
Good Christ....of course not. Finally some sanity from someone. COMMODITIES AND CASH ARE FUNGIBLE!!!!! It's the concept of "Seignorage," that is being confused here with simple supply and demand. The American Government collects maybe 15-50 billion per year due to its Seignorage advantage. Not a huge sum to overcome if and when the world shifts to another reserve. NOT ONE USD WILL BE MORE OR LESS DEMANDED (given perfect friction) IF CRUDE OIL IS PRICED IN SOYBEANS OR CHEESBURGERS OR PLAM OIL OR GRESASY WOOL OR WHEAT OR TIMBER OR '55 Chevy's or oatmealâ¦.or fire woodâ¦.orâ¦whatever⦠Can anyone tell me why the above is true? How the holy freak do you geniuses think the Columbian drug cartel settles their monetary accounts? How do you think that the halawa system works? Fungibility. Fuxx meâ¦.
I love it when people say "oil is just another commodity". No...Oil isn't just any other commodity, it is the defacto global currency.Unlike other commodities eg. soybeans oil is the life blood of the modern economy. Without oil the worlds economies will grind to a complete stop. Oil isn't only used for Gasoline, it's used for a lot of other products. In fact without oil you'll starve because truckers won't be able to deliver groceries to your local stores. Take your mention of '55 Chevy's. What is the current demand for '55 Chevy's? now imagine all of a sudden all the worlds crude ..... 75 million barrels per day priced @ $70 per barrel i.e. $5.2 Billion worth of crude per day ..... all of it ..... is now priced in '55 Chevy's. You can't buy Crude oil unless you got '55 Chevy's to trade with. Will the demand for '55 Chevy's increase or decrease from the current rate? Or will the demand for '55 Chevy's remain the same? Keeping in mind that someone actually has to manufacture '55 Chevy's , in the case for the USD, we just print more of it. Also much of the massive USD reserves OPEC is accumulating eventually find their way into the US markets. eg the recent fallout with the ports issue. They're sitting on massive USD reserves that are losing value every day because we're printing more every day, I suspect much of the recent cash inflows into the US stock market moving it higher is OPEC money.