De Dollar Hegemonie 39

'Offshoring Interests and Economic Dogma
Shrinking the US Dollar from the Inside-Out
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

On December 8, Chinese and French news services reported that Iran had stopped billing its oil exports in dollars.
Americans might never hear this news as the independence of the US media was destroyed in the 1990s when Rupert Murdoch persuaded the Clinton administration and the quislings in Congress to allow the US media to be monopolized by a few mega-corporations.
Iran's oil minister, Gholam Hossein Nozari, declared: "The dollar is an unreliable currency in regards to its devaluation and the loss oil exporters have endured from this trend." Iran has proposed to OPEC that the US dollar no longer be used by any oil exporting countries. As the oil emirates and the Saudis have already decided to reduce their holdings of US dollars, the US might actually find itself having to pay for its energy imports in euros or yen.
Venezuela's Chavez, survivor of a US-led coup against him and a likely target of a US assassination attempt, might follow the Iranian lead. Also, Russia's Putin, who is fed up with the US government's efforts to encircle Russia militarily, will be tempted to add Russia's oil exports to the symbolic assault on the dollar.
The assault is symbolic, because the dollar is not the reserve currency due to oil exports being billed in dollars. It's the other way around. Oil exports are billed in dollars, because the dollar is the reserve currency.
What is important to the dollar's value and its role as reserve currency is whether foreigners continue to consider dollar-denominated assets sufficiently attractive to absorb the constant flow of red ink from US trade and budget deficits. If Iran and other countries do not want dollars, they can exchange them for other currencies regardless of the currency in which oil is billed.
Indeed, the evidence is that foreigners are not finding dollar-denominated assets sufficiently attractive. The dollar has declined dramatically during the Bush regime regardless of the fact that oil is billed in dollars. Iran is dropping dollars in response to the dollar's loss of value. This is a market response to a depreciating currency, not a punitive action by Iran to sink the dollar.'

Lees verder: http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts12132007.html