Why Iran's oil bourse can't break the buck

asian times ^ | Mar 10, 2006 | F William Engdahl

[vrwc0915]

ping

[nuconvert]

pong

[satchmodog9]

for later

[capt. norm]

I had to look up "bourse" omline.

Sure hope I'm not the only one.

I can see you all snickering in front of your monitors "This clod doesn't even know what a bourse is".

[Nonstatist]

Exactly right. We need to continue to flex our muscle and stay on top. The minute we slip, we're done for.

[crushelits]

Bourse: stock exchange.

Bourse is a French word.

[Jack Black]

Bourse is the new gravitas.

[4U2OUI]

Mark for later read.

[capt. norm]

Bourse: stock exchange.

Thanx. You gave me a more, concise definition than I was able to find via Google.

I had the awful feeling that everybody else knew all about what it meant and I just walked in from Gooberville.

[PGalt]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

[grey_whiskers]

F William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press)

Well, I guess that says it all!

Full Disclosure: Is it true nobody has ever seen Engdahl and Art Bell in the same room simultaneously?

Cheers!

[wafflehouse]

great article!

[papertyger]

I had the awful feeling that everybody else knew all about what it meant and I just walked in from Gooberville.

Don't sweat it! When something like that happens we all just discuss it through FReepmail so you don't be humiliated in public.

Yes, I'm being evil. I'd never heard of it until two weeks ago. ;o)

[M-cubed]

Yup......Fiat money is a funny thing.... a double edged sword
RE:> Fiat money:
Fiat money is a monetary standard (usually paper money) that people are required by law to accept as a medium of exchange and/or a standard of deferred payment. It is money by the "fiat" -- the command -- of the sovereign. http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/prin/txt/money/defn.html

[The Duke]

A bourse is a bourse, of course, of course...

[RaceBannon]

With the 400% price rise, nations such as France, Germany and Japan suddenly found reason to try to buy their oil directly in their own currencies - French francs, Deutschmarks or Japanese yen - to lessen the pressure on their rapidly declining reserves of trade dollars. The US Treasury and the Pentagon made certain that did not happen, partly with some secret diplomacy by Kissinger, bullying threats, and a whopping-big US military agreement with the key OPEC producer, Saudi Arabia. At that time it helped that the shah of Iran was seen in Washington to be a vassal of Kissinger.

The point was not that the US dollar became a "petro" currency. The point was that the reserve status of the dollar, now a paper currency, was bolstered by the 400% increase in world demand for dollars to buy oil. But that was only a part of the dollar story. In 1979, after the accession to power of the ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Iran, oil prices shot through the roof for the second time in six years. Yet, paradoxically, later that year the dollar began a precipitous free-fall, not a rise. It was no "petrodollar".

So, using the oil crisis to secure dollars strengthens the dollar by making people use dollars to buy oil, but NOT buying oil in dollars wont hurt??

As for the latter dollar plunge, that was all the trade items we engage in, not just one, and people eventually had to come back to the dollar.

If oil goes off the dollar, they dont HAVE to come back to the dollar. This guy is contradicting himself.

[gotribe]

Great article, but I see the defense of the dollar as a benefit from bombing Iran, not the primary motivation.

Yes. The author is putting the cart before the horse.

[nuconvert]

Lol. You mean the turnip truck you were riding in came from Gooberville?