there was a movie in the early 80's called Rollover about all the OPEC countries surreptitiously moving into gold but sounds like the same objective... to hurt the USA.
Posted on 05/15/2005 5:14:47 AM PDT by RaceBannon
Putin: Why Not Price Oil in Euros? By Catherine Belton Moscow Times October 10, 2003
President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone. "We do not rule out that it is possible. That would be interesting for our European partners," Putin said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the Urals town of Yekaterinburg, where the two leaders conducted two-day talks. "But this does not depend solely on us. We do not want to hurt prices on the market," he said. "Putin's putting a big card on the table," said Youssef Ibrahim, managing director of the Strategic Energy Investment Group in Dubai and a member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, an influential body of leading world thinkers thought to help set the United States' foreign policy agenda. "In the context of what is happening worldwide, this statement is very important," he said.
Putin's words come in the wake of a protracted drive by the EU to attract more countries' trade and currency reserves into euros, in a bid to chip away at U.S. hegemony over the global economy and money supply. A move by Russia, as the world's second largest oil exporter, to trade oil in euros, could provoke a chain reaction among other oil producers currently mulling a switch and would further boost the euro's gradually growing share of global currency reserves. That would be a huge boon to the euro zone economy and potentially catastrophic for the United States. Dollar-based global oil trade now gives the United States carte blanche to print dollars without sparking inflation -- to fund huge expenses on wars, military build-ups, and consumer spending, as well as cut taxes and run up huge trade deficits.
Quite right.
As growth goes, the Eurozone is the world's laughingstock: heavily taxed, heavily regulated with overly pampered, under-incented workers.
The European central bank has no growth mandate. They are solely inflation targeters, and as such keep interest rates unnecessarily high. But any growth is choked off.
This is an old international Marxist ploy that was put out in the lead up to the war in Iraq. It's economic premises are economically ignorant.
The first thing that would happen in a world rushing to buy more Euros is that the EU zone would go into a depression.
The somewhat lower US dollar to EU exchange rate is part of what is already contributing to a lack of economic growth in the EU's major members - France and Germany, and will soon be hurting its smaller members in Eastern Europe. The higher EU value makes their exports less competitive, makes our exports more competitive; it hurts their local industries and brings in less of the foreign exchange they need to buy imports.
If everyone needs to buy more Euros to buy oil, the skyrocketing value of the Euro will price the products from many EU manufacturers out of the world markets. Its a recipe for an EU depresssion. Frankly, it would not surprise me if that was exactly what the international Marxists wanted.
These doom and alarm stories surface here every so often. The idea that the Russians, Iranians, or whoever is the villain du jour, would crash the entire world economy for the sake of poking the US in the eye is a ridiculous fantasy, even if it could be done.
This is especially so given the shaky state of the Euro, which has likely already seen its high-water mark VS the dollar, at least for the foreseeable future.
What is does a "trade deficit" mean to an economy that has been growing, in most years, and growing between 3% and 4% in the past few years? It means the domestic economy can afford to buy more, in goods and services, than it exports, in good and services, because it's internal strengths are still allowing it to internalize the difference with higher productivity, among other things.
Trade deficits, international monetary exchange and international monetary flows work together, not independently and if they were not working, and balancing the international exchange (which is what is really important) then the adjustments would come in the form of changes in monetary values. What would those changes mean for the US? A lower dollar; which would mean what? We'd be able export more (our manufactured goods become cheaper) and import less. While somewhere, the "trade" balance would go in a different direction for some other countries, but between international trade and international monetary exchanges, the system continually balances things out.
"Trade deificit" is a chimera, as far as problems in a growing economy.
That's the magic of PPP.
Using a normal dollar to euro rate (like what actually happens you actually go to buy actual euros as opposed to the arbitrary way PPP rates are calculated) of 1.2633 (from Bloomberg), the German GDP per capita is $33,839, which is well above per capita GDP of an Arkansan at $27,709.
To Iscool:
With regard to the President's "fortune": You think you know what is in the President's investment portfolio? From your statement, it's clear your research extends to often repeated comments in puff opinion pieces and not knowledge of any sort.
there was a movie in the early 80's called Rollover about all the OPEC countries surreptitiously moving into gold but sounds like the same objective... to hurt the USA.
Using a normal dollar to euro rate (like what actually happens you actually go to buy actual euros as opposed to the arbitrary way PPP rates are calculated)
Using the same calc for China, what would you say China's GDP is?
That's a good question. While I repose a lot of confidence in the United States and in Germany when they publish economic numbers, I have to say that Red China does not inspire the same confidence in me. But their mouthpiece at China View has this article dated May 15, 2005:
China's GDP making new record
BEIJING, May 15 -- China's per capita GDP has topped ten thousand yuan, or some 12 hundred US dollars.
The National Development and Reform Commission says China's GDP also hit a new high of more than 13.6 trillion yuan, or about 1.6 trillion US dollars by 2004, when compared with the planned 12.5 trillion yuan, or 1.5 trillion US dollars, by 2005.
It adds the country's GDP has grown by 8.6 percent over the past four years, 1.6 percent higher than expected.
The first one is, but the ones after are more recent
Price per Barrel in US Dollars x # of euros per dollar.
So if oil is $50 per barrel and there are 0.80 Euros per dollar, then the price of oil is 40 euros per barrel.
Changing the quoted price into Euros really is going to do much to our economy... Because when we bought oil, even if we paid in Euros, those saudis or whomever would probably want some dollars. so they'd convert those euros back into dollars. Right now, they get dollars, and they probably convert some into Euros, some into Swiss Francs, etc...
Ah Ha....George Soros at work!!!
If I made a mistake, I'm hear to learn...And your contribution is???
Don't tell me I'm wrong if you can't correct me...I figure it's common knowledge that George Jr made many millions of dollars for selling his baseball team to the taxpayers of the state of Texas (As it turns out, the taxpayers have no claim to the team, or the new stadium, just the bill)....
AND, I thought if was common knowledge that the Bush family owns large oil interests if Bahrain, next to Saudi Arabia is it??? IF not so, tell us...
Again, I am not the one who made any assumptions, but you seem so sure of what you call "common knowledge", which given what passes as "common knowledge" must be no more accurate than a Michael Moore movie.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1403150/posts
Alas, there was no interest. I'm thinking that this announcement was a response to Bush's comments in Latvia and Georgia.
After all, since most of the world's oil is produced and consumed outside of the US, why should it be priced in dollars?
And it would seem that countries should hold foreign reserve currencies proportionately to their investment and trade transaction flows.
That is exactly right. I believe the left is trying to find something negative about the economy, now that we clearly aren't in recession. And people view trade deficit as a negative thing, so they push it. What matters is our gdp growth per capita, and unemployment rates. Both of which are very healthy.
And the Govt budget has gone from 1 to 2 trillion dollars since PResident Reagan. That's GOT to stop. Thats money that could be poured back into the economy but is disappearing.
We went to war to get Iraq producing oil again and get the cartel's hand off of our throats. Period.
Yeah there wa a lot of stuff on that site that was awwful, but, it was a Patriot who first threw this idea to me, and we spoke of it about 2 years ago, about the time Putin made that article.
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