Posted on 05/07/2019 4:03:22 PM PDT by Innovative
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a sudden, unscheduled trip to Baghdad on Tuesday, as an aircraft carrier and Air Force bombers headed to the Middle East amid warnings that Iran was contemplating an attack on U.S. troops in the region.
The surprise visit came after Pompeo abruptly canceled a trip to Germany, where he was scheduled to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Heiko Maas. The State Department initially said only that the change was made because pressing issues had arisen.
Pompeos visit to Baghdad, which followed an Arctic Council meeting in Finland, took on an air of urgency as regional tensions rose on the eve of the first anniversary of President Trumps decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear agreement.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
OK. Iraq still need to sell oil, right? Independent US companies too. Lybia, Iran, USSR, Venezuela, Norway too.
[There is no way anyone can justify 18 years of sacrificing American blood and treasure in the Middle East.]
As to refugees, there’s no problem. Post-war Japan an Germany had refugee problems. Millions of orphans and widows. 10% of Germany and 5% of Japan lay dead. Millions of homes turned into rubble. The world said you will deal with it, and shut the door to them. So they did. There is no refugee problem - there’s a run to the West; there’s an open door policy problem.
[OK. Iraq still need to sell oil, right? Independent US companies too. Lybia, Iran, USSR, Venezuela, Norway too.]
There are diplomatic ways to negotiate the problem.
Ukraine is just irrelevant on this issue.
[There are diplomatic ways to negotiate the problem.
Ukraine is just irrelevant on this issue.]
It is great that you mentioned South Korea. South Korea was the nation which has the best perception of modern Russia as for a several years ago among all nations. It seems like South Korean is not buying Western propaganda on the issue.
Israel, Japan also. If you are a Russian man in Japan the women are all yours. If you are a better off tech person in Israel who reaches his a wage ceiling where would you do? US takes Mexicans for immigrants but deport Israelis. Russia considers Israel for near abroad and any Israely has the way to green card shortened.
[It is great that you mentioned South Korea. South Korea was the nation which has the best perception of modern Russia as for a several years ago among all nations. It seems like South Korean is not buying Western propaganda on the issue.]
Half of South Korean military equipment is of the Soviet or Russian make. More so than of North Korea recently which has the most Chinese Equipment. How would you explain Israel and Japan?
[It is great that you mentioned South Korea. South Korea was the nation which has the best perception of modern Russia as for a several years ago among all nations. It seems like South Korean is not buying Western propaganda on the issue.]
https://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/27/country/116/
https://www.pewglobal.org/database/indicator/2/country/116/
Now, I’m sure there’s some sense in which what the article you read is true, just as Bill Clinton did not have sex with Ms Lewinsky. It’s just not true in the normal usage of the words printed.
Nominal GDP rating is the remnant of the USD dominance myth.
Japanese or South Korean wives travelling to Russia and enjoying the better quality of life at less the nominal income are one example. So are the Israelis moving to Russia for tech jobs.
Trillions of dollars and untold gallons of American blood (due in no small part to insane rules of engagement) is “peanuts” to you?
You are one sick silicone sister.
By the way, please educate yourself on the petrodollar - how it came into being, why it is important, and the situation we face today.
Just re-read your ill-informed piece on the US Dollar.
As I asked before, take the time to educate yourself on this topic. You are woefully ignorant in this area.
[Trillions of dollars and untold gallons of American blood (due in no small part to insane rules of engagement) is peanuts to you?
You are one sick silicone sister.]
We have the largest economy in the world. That has been true for 100 years. As someone who was once on one side of a foreign exchange desk, with daily trade amounts in the hundreds of millions of dollars, I can tell you that customers don’t care what currency they trade in, as long as the bid-ask spread (transaction cost) is the smallest it can be. And for currencies, one side of the transaction was invariably the dollar. If transaction costs involving the USD had increased vs JPY, DEM, FRF or GBP, they would have done that other side in those currencies.
The total value of worldwide annual production at $60 per barrel is $60/barrel x 80m barrels/day x 365 days/year = $1.752T. The sum total revenues of the top 5 US companies by revenues is $2.2T. The combined revenues of the top 500 US companies are $12.1T. It’s the real economy that’s providing the dollar’s liquidity. Oil producers are merely piggy-backing on it because it’s convenient.
Apple really does sell over $100b of products to foreign countries. Microsoft’s Windows really is the world’s operating system of choice on desktops, and Intel’s Pentium chips and AMD’s Ryzen chips really do dominate those computers. On top of which Qualcomm really does make the guts of smartphones and phone switches alike. That’s not even getting into the pharmaceuticals, where Gilead has made the first drug ever to permanently cure Hepatitis C at a cost over $50K per course of treatment, which is still cheaper than the previous drugs, which merely dealt with the symptoms, but had to be taken forever, vs Gilead’s one treatment and cured.
As long as we are a huge economy and leaders on the technological frontier, the dollar will have huge transaction volumes and continue to be the reserve currency for foreign countries. Once we falter, some other currency will take over that function. And it won’t be particularly noteworthy. The British pound used to be the world reserve currency. That’s no longer the case. Does Britain, with its per capita output of $40K (vs Germany’s $40K, Japan’s $38K and our $59K) seem like it’s a disaster zone?
The bottom line is that if Robert Fisk, the Guardian’s favorite left-wing journalist, is talking about the “petrodollar”, you know there’s something not quite right about the concept. Take it from someone who has literally spent tens of thousands of hours thinking about the financial markets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Maddison_statistics_of_the_ten_largest_economies_by_GDP_(PPP)
https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/07/debunking-the-dumping-the-dollar-conspiracy/
Wow - you sure know how to baffle people with BS, I’ll give you that.
However, not everyone is gullible.
Nice try.
You wrote a lot of right things but the entire message is confusing to say the least.
First you said the removal of Saddam resulting in deaths and empoverishment of millions of people is justified because his control of a couple more out of hundred oil producers would ‘ruin American industry’. Now you are saying that petrodollar and oil markets are peanuts and bring Apple and big pharma to prove it.
And you say 9/11 and all the people who died because of Islamic terrorism are peanuts ‘because WWII, Korea and Vietnam’?
Are you a Zbig Brzezinsky ghost?
[Wow - you sure know how to baffle people with BS, Ill give you that.
However, not everyone is gullible.
Nice try.]
Oil prices went from $3 to $12 around the time of the “petrodollar”. It has now gone to $60. That’s a 20-fold increase. Where’s the benefit to the US? The underlying assumption seems to be that the US is a failed state that would resemble North Korea if not for the “petrodollar”. It’s a close cousin of the notion that American military bases are an oppressive presence that keeps foreign imports cheap. People who believe that the “petrodollar” gives the US an edge or that foreign garrisons = cheap imports are uttering falsehoods. Neither oil nor imports are especially cheap in dollar terms, and they have been getting more expensive over the years vis-a-vis other countries as the dollar has depreciated. It’s a truism that oil has stayed more or less the same in Japanese yen terms while doubling in dollar terms over the past 30 years. It’s the same reason Japanese cars have become more expensive than Detroit iron in that time frame - dollar depreciation.
“” “” Oil prices went from $3 to $12 around the time of the petrodollar. It has now gone to $60. “” “”
Everything went up in price since when. Would you produce a barrel of oil for $3 today?
This point is irrelevant.
[First you said the removal of Saddam resulting in deaths and empoverishment of millions of people is justified because his control of a couple more out of hundred oil producers would ruin American industry. ]
Millions of people have not been killed in Iraq. The total body count there is less than 300K. That’s less than 1%
of Iraq’s population of 38m.
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Ultimately the low body count is the real problem. The German and Japanese occupations were fairly peaceful because these nations were all fought-out. 10% and 5% of the German and Japanese populations lay dead at the end of the war. Whereas probably less than 2% of Iraq’s Sunni Arab population has been killed in 16 years of sporadic war. Until enough of them are killed, war weariness won’t set in. While the country’s non-Sunni Arab population is working on this, they really need to carry out Saddam-style proscriptions in order to bring the Sunni Arabs to heel.
But it makes a difference if the number of independent producers goes down, especially when 5% (Saddam’s Iraq) of the market becomes 33% (Iraq with all of the Arabian peninsula under Saddam) of the market. It won’t destroy the US economy, but it will cost us hundreds of billions of dollars per year, dwarfing the cost of removing and killing him.
With oil priced at $60, the cost of oil to the American economy, is about $450b a year. Take prices to $180, ball-parked in 2008, and the cost goes to $1.35T. That took the world economy into recession, with the US economy recording a 3% drop and the major European economies (France, Germany, UK) reporting a high single digit drop.
It’s the same reason we got involved in Europe during WWII. It was against the American interest for either Germany or Russia to conquer Western Europe, one of the most productive regions on the planet. It’s the reason we’re remain in NATO today - to ward off either the Russians or Germans getting too big for their britches. Bottom line, the construction of empires by foreign countries, whether oil or land, is detrimental to US interests.
Trump could order US troops out of Syria tomorrow. But he won’t, for the same reason he approved the destruction of the company-sized Russian mercenary unit in Syria. His approach is to smile at America’s adversaries, while inserting a stiletto between their ribs. That’s why Putin is a great guy, but we’re supplying Ukraine with anti-tank weapons and sniper rifles, and we’re pulling out of the nuclear arms treaty.
[Everything went up in price since when. Would you produce a barrel of oil for $3 today?
This point is irrelevant.]
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