Educate yourself👇⬇⏬🔍🔎 With open lands for collateral already in short supply, the US Government embarked on a new program to shore up sagging international demand for the dollar. The United States approached the worlds oil producing nations, mostly in the Middle East, and offered them a deal. In exchange for only selling their oil for dollars, the United States would guarantee the military safety of those oil-rich nations. The oil rich nations would agree to spend and invest their US paper dollars inside the United States, in particular in US Treasury Bonds, redeemable through future generations of US taxpayers. The concept was labelled the petrodollar. In effect, the US, no longer able to back the dollar with gold, was now backing it with oil. Other peoples oil, and the necessity to keep control over those oil nations in order to prop up the dollar has shaped Americas foreign policy in the region ever since. But as Americas manufacturing and agriculture has declined, the oil producing nations faced a dilemma. Those piles of US Federal Reserve notes were not able to purchase much from the United States because the United States had little (other than real estate) which anyone wanted to buy. Europes cars and aircraft were superior and less costly, while experiments with GMO food crops led to nations refusing to buy US food exports. Israels constant belligerence against its neighbours caused them to wonder if the US could actually keep their end of the petrodollar arrangement. Oil-producing nations started to talk of selling their oil for whatever currency the purchasers chose to use. Iraq, already hostile to the United States following Desert Storm, demanded the right to sell their oil for Euros in 2000 and in 2002, the United Nations agreed to allow it under the Oil for food program instituted following Desert Storm. One year later the United States re-invaded Iraq, lynched Saddam Hussein, and placed Iraqs oil back on the world market only for US dollars. Following 9-11, the clear US policy shift away from being an impartial broker of peace in the Middle East to one of unquestioned support for Israels aggressions, only further eroded confidence in the Petrodollar deal and even more oil-producing nations started openly talking of oil trade for other global currencies. Over in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi had instituted a state-owned central bank and a value-based trade currency, the Gold Dinar. Gaddafi announced that Libyas oil was for sale, but only for the Gold Dinar. Other African nations, seeing the rise of the Gold Dinar and the Euro, even as the US dollar continued its inflation-driven decline, flocked to the new Libyan currency for trade. This move had the potential to seriously undermine the global hegemony of the dollar. French President Nicolas Sarkozy reportedly went so far as to call Libya a “threat” to the financial security of the world. So, the United States invaded Libya, brutally murdered Gaddafi (the object lesson of Saddams lynching not being enough of a message, apparently), imposed a private central bank, and returned Libyas oil output to dollars only. The gold that was to have been made into the Gold Dinars is, as of last report, unaccounted for.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 23:52:36 +0000
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