Free Republic

We've all heard this before. If the petrodollar is not the currency in which the world trades in oil. the US will collapse economically. There's nothing new except for the fact that according to the video the US overthrew Qaddafi and Saddam because they threatened to stop trading oil in dollars. Not that it is the definitive cause for the invasion of Iraq or even the truth of why we invaded,it does give me some rationale however fictitious it may be for why we did in fact overthrow Saddam.

I don't know too much about Jim Rickards, just found this to be an interesting video about the overall economy and some tidbits about what our government agencies are up to. The video is a 45 minutes long interview of sorts and discussion. Just posting in the event other are interested.

Mike Bird March 13, 2015 The dollar is set for its strongest quarterly strengthening since 1992, according to Bank of America, a good sign that a rate hike is around the corner. When markets expect that US interest rates will be hiked, it typically strengthens the dollar. That's because people rush to change other currencies into dollars — they can make more money in dollar-denominated investments. The higher demand for the US currency drives its value up. In the past, significant dollar gains against other currencies have pretty much happened only during periods of extreme financial or geopolitical distress. The...

As analysts were waiting to see how fast the euro reaches parity against the U.S. dollar, one foreign exchange pro told CNBC he saw the common currency dropping even further, with the dollar strengthening another 20 percent. George Saravelos, global co-head of FX research at Deutsche Bank, said the euro could fall to 85 U.S. cents against the greenback.

The euro slipped to a fresh 12-year low against the US dollar on Thursday as the common currency continued to buckle under pressure felt since the European Central Bank launched its massive quantitative easing scheme at the start of the week.

Currency wars and the growing trend away from dollar dominance in international finance, particularly in emerging markets, was highlighted in an interesting CNBC article this morning entitled “Is the Dollar Losing its Clout Among EMs?” It refers to the deliberate and stated policy of “de-dollarization” around the world, the decline in the use of the dollar in international trade and as a reserve currency, and the emergence of the new BRICS bank. The article quotes best-selling author and Pentagon insider, Jim Rickards. Rickards says that the status of the dollar as a reserve currency is still solid despite its decline...

The dollar set fresh multiyear highs against the euro and the yen in Asian trade Tuesday, as market participants bet on the continuing divergence in monetary and economic conditions in the U.S., the eurozone and Japan.

LONDON (AP) — The euro could soon be doing something it's only done a couple of times in its 16-year existence — trading 1-to-1 with the dollar. Europe's single currency has since May been on a downward trajectory against the dollar, mainly because of the divergence in economic performance between the eurozone and the United States. Where the eurozone's recovery from the global financial crisis has been at best anemic, the U.S. economy appears to be going from strength to strength. And that divergence is hurting the euro's fortunes. From $1.40 last spring, it is now trading below $1.10 for...

With the Federal Reserve printing trillions upon trillions of dollars to keep the economic system afloat, many investors and financial pundits have surmised that the fundamental economic problems facing the United States during the crash of 2008 have been resolved. Stocks are, after all, at historic highs. But the insiders know different. And if there’s any single person out there who understands U.S. monetary policy and its long-term effects on domestic and global affairs it’s former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan. As the head of the world’s most powerful central bank for nearly two decades he’s privy to the insider...

The American people are feeling really good right about now. For example, Gallup’s economic confidence index has hit the highest level that we have seen since the last recession. In addition, nearly half of all Americans believe that 2015 will be a better year than 2014 was, and only about 10 percent believe that it will be a worse year. And a lot of people are generally feeling quite good about the people that have been leading our nation. According to Gallup, once again this year Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America and Barack Obama is the...

(Vladimir Putin, right, with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in 2014.) Iran is ditching the dollar. Iran is no longer using the US dollar in foreign-trade transactions and is replacing it with other currencies, t he deputy governor at the Iranian Central Bank Gholami Kamyab said, according to Sputnik News. "In trade exchanges with the foreign countries, Iran uses other currencies including Chinese yuan, euro, Turkish lira, Russian ruble, and South Korean won," Kamyab reportedly said. He also reportedly added that Iran was considering bilateral currency-swap agreements, which would allow partners to exchange one foreign currency for the equivalent...

Myles Udland January 27, 2015It is officially a horrible morning for the economy. After the global manufacturing giant Caterpillar had poor fourth-quarter results and gave a gloomy outlook for 2015, economic data from the US has added to more bad news for the economy Tuesday morning. Durable goods orders were a HUGE miss, declining 3.4% against expectations for a 0.3% increase. Durable goods orders excluding defense and transportation orders, referred to as "core" capex, declined 0.6% in December. Last month's numbers were also revised sharply lower, with November's orders revised down to -2.1% from a prior number of -0.7%. Following...

Rip up your euro forecasts. A day after the European Central Bank unveiled its bond-buying program, the single currency still was in free fall, blowing past analysts’ expectations for how low the euro can go. Some investors now say the euro could fall to the point where it is on equal footing with the U.S. dollar for the first time since it climbed above the buck in late 2002. “If you would have asked me a few months ago, I would’ve said that parity could be in the cards in the years ahead. Now, we can’t rule it out anymore...

Tyler Durden 01/23/2015 Submitted by John Rubino via Dollar Collapse blog Yesterday the European Central Bank acknowledged that the currency it manages is being sucked into a deflationary vortex. It responded in the usual way with, in effect, a massive devaluation. Eurozone citizens have also responded predictably, by converting their unbacked, make-believe, soon-to-be-worth-a-lot-less paper money into something tangible. They’re bidding gold up dramatically.(snip)

The "Deflationary Vortex": Global Dollar Economy Suffers Biggest Plunge Since Lehman, Down $4 Trillion One of the macroeconomic observations that has gotten absolutely no mention in recent months is the curious fact that while global economic growth has not imploded in recent quarters, it is because GDP has been represented, as is customary, in local currency terms. Of course, this comes as a time when local currencies (at least those which are not the USD) have been plunging against the greenback on the back of the expectations that the Fed will hike rates some time in the summer or later...

You were considered a hoarder and a slacker if you still resisted turning over your gold to the government. ... most of those who voted for FDR never expected him to confiscate private holdings of gold coins, bullion, and certificates. Roosevelt called the measure a temporary one (it wasn’t), and he followed it up by invalidating gold clauses in private contracts that obligated payment in gold dollars, which had the effect of devaluing the assets of bond and contract holders. ... By January 1934, Roosevelt increased the dollar price of gold from $20.67 to $35, thus devaluing the dollar by...

If you were waiting for a “black swan event” to come along and devastate the global economy, you don’t have to wait any longer. As I write this, the price of U.S. oil is sitting at $45.76 a barrel. It has fallen by more than 60 dollars a barrel since June. There is only one other time in history when we have seen anything like this happen before. That was in 2008, just prior to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. But following the financial crisis of 2008, the price of oil rebounded fairly rapidly. As you...

Back in November, before most grasped just how serious the collapse in crude was (and would become, as well as its massive implications), we wrote "How The Petrodollar Quietly Died, And Nobody Noticed", because for the first time in almost two decades, energy-exporting countries would pull their "petrodollars" out of world markets in 2015. This empirical death of Petrodollar followed years of windfalls for oil exporters such as Russia, Angola, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Much of that money found its way into financial markets, helping to boost asset prices and keep the cost of borrowing down, through so-called petrodollar recycling....

Propelling the rally is anticipation of the Fed’s first interest-rate increase in almost a decade, a move widely expected to come this year. The Fed is preparing to raise rates from near zero amid steady improvement in the U.S. economy and labor market since the financial crisis.

2014 has been a historic year and so will be 2015, if only because 2014 set a great deal of things in motion, but resolved none of them. I have come to the conclusion that there is a 80% chance of a massive Ukrainian attack on Novorussia next year, probably in the first part of the year. My best guesstimate is that Novorussia will probably be able to beat back this attack, albeit with great effort and big losses. The Russian economy will continue to suffer and appear to be sinking for the next six months or so at which...