De Dollar Hegemonie

Jody Paulson. Ik weet niet wie ze is, maar ze heeft wel een verhaal te vertellen. Ik hoorde haar op Radical Radio, een progressief radiostation in Seattle. http://www.radicalradio.org/ Ze zegt: 'Today international finance uses the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency instead of gold which is intrinsically worth more than kindling or toilet-paper. Yet our fiat money is still treated as the world’s gold standard. In order to protect an attack on its currency, a country’s central bank must have dollar reserves corresponding to its currency in circulation. The dollar now accounts for 68% of global currency reserves, up from 51% a decade ago. However, at the same time, we sell only 12.3% of the world's goods but we buy 18.9%. That's like spending 150% of your paycheck every week. Yet the rest of the world keeps producing things in exchange for a bunch of green paper printed in the USA. Why? The answer is that the world's most essential commodities, including oil are denominated in dollars. Everyone accepts dollars because you need dollars to buy oil. This all came about in 1974, when the Saudi oil cartel agreed to dollar hegemony in exchange for American arms. Think about this for a minute won't you, it costs the Fed about 4 cents to print a hundred dollar bill. Foreign countries have to buy this money in order to buy the oil they need. Essentially we're getting our oil for free. That's been fine and dandy for decades but now look out. There's a new currency vying for hegemony, the Euro. Today European banks are seeking to have the Euro accepted as the new world reserve currency. In November, 2000 Saddam Hussein moved to sell Iraq's oil directly for Euros. You can imagine the panic this caused at the Fed. All the oil that gets bought with its 4 cent pieces of paper would be lost and worse it set an unacceptable example for other OPEC members. Saddam had to be stopped. Enter the war on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Today 14 permanent military bases are being built in Iraq along with the world’s biggest embassy in Baghdad. The US needs a huge permanent presence in the region to protect its dollar hegemony but Iran is seriously talking about ditching the dollar for the Euro and so are the Saudi's. Judging from their past behavior, the current administration won't let these rumblings go unanswered.' Lees verder: http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/transcripts/319 Of luister: http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/news/313