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lopaka3 Great Old One Joined: 17 Sep 2001 Total posts: 2154 Location: Near the corner of a Big Continent Gender: Male |
 Posted: 27-10-2003 15:55 Post subject: The dollar, the Euro & oil: the redlining of America |
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I have absolutely no idea where to put this, but this is an excerpt I recieved last week from a listserve I'm on and thought I'd post in light of Brian Ellwood's question on the euro thread in UL's. This article's take would seem to be more that this wiil be the result, not cause of the War. (note: redlining is the practice of instituions like banks & insurance from serving a particluar geographic area, usually beacause of the race or income of the residents)
Mods, merge (or not) as you see fit. -lopaka
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'Bush plunges U.S. into rapid decline'
Date: Saturday, October 18 @ 09:43:23 EDT
Topic: Foreign Policy
The previously unthinkable is now on the table. Russia, the world's second
largest oil exporter, is giving serious consideration to trading its black
gold in euros, a switch that would surely set dominos in motion among other
oil producing nations and, ultimately, knock the dollar off its global
throne. Americans can thank George Bush and his Pirates for accelerating a
process that might have taken decades to evolve, but which now looms as a
"catastrophe" on the horizon. "There are already a number of countries
within OPEC that would prefer to trade in euros," said oil analyst and U.S.
Council on Foreign Relations member Youssef Ibrahim, in an interview with
the Moscow Times, October 10. "Putin's putting a big card on the table."
A switch to the euro "is really possible," according to Russian economist
and Putin advisor Yevgeny Gavrilenkov. "Why not? More than half of Russia's
oil trade is with Europe. But there will be great opposition to this from
the United States."
Gayrilenkov can be forgiven his understatement. Russian President Vladimir
Putin dropped his bombshell as if casually stating the time of day. Is
Russia considering a switch from dollar-pricing of petroleum? "We do not
rule out that it is possible. That would be interesting for our European
partners," Putin told reporters at a joint news conference with German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in the Ural Mountains region of Russia.
Interesting, indeed. Even more important than the huge and immediate boost
that a Russian oil-euro arrangement would provide to the European Union,
the move would signal the definitive end of America's artificial
dollar-domination of the planet, a privileged status the U.S. has abused as
a weapon since the end of World War II.
As Dr. Sonja Ebron wrote in , February 20, "Given the highly leveraged and
fragile state of our economy, an OPEC switch from the dollar to the euro
would bring a quick and devastating dollar and Wall Street crash that would
make 1929 look like a $50 casino bet." (See "Why African Americans Should
Oppose the War.")
One month before the U.S. invasion, Dr. Ebron warned of the monstrous
blowback that would result:
"War is not the answer. It's a shortsighted desperation play that is
doomed to failure. Our military forces may take but cannot hold Iraq's oil,
as they have failed to tame Afghanistan's land. Far from staving off
disaster, our arrogance may instead compel OPEC to 'go euro' en masse,
taking many oil-consuming nations with them by force of economics. And a
trade war with Europe will lend the coup de grace to our economy."
The shrinking superpower
The Bush men launched their offensive largely to ensure that oil would
continue to be priced in dollars. American military dominance of the Middle
East and a series of "regime changes" would eliminate the euro-threat - or
so the theory went. An opposite chain of events has occurred, with the
impetus coming, not from OPEC, but from an increasingly confident and
assertive Russia, for whom Shock and Awe is mere fireworks.
Putin displayed his card to the world - a bargaining chip with the EU and
an implicit threat to the United States - because he could. The "sole
superpower" cannot stop him, but must instead come up with terms that
outweigh the benefits of euro-logic. The Bush Pirate's quest for a global
market subordinate to American fiat has failed. This shift in the global
relationship of forces should have been expected when Bush declared war
against world order. It is the logical result of, and answer to, the
president's 2002 ultimatum, "either you are with us, or against us." The
planet now prepares to turn on its own axis. Once set in motion, the
effects will be irreversible, no matter which party wins the White House in
2004. Henry C. K. Liu got it right in his far-sighted April 5 Asia Times
piece, "The War that may end the age of superpower."
"This war has succeeded in pushing Russia, France, Germany and China
closer, in contrast if not in opposition to US interests worldwide, a
significant development with long term implications that are difficult to
assess at present..
"This war will end from its own inevitable evolution, even without
anti-war demonstrations. It will not be a happy end. There is yet no
discernible exit strategy for the US. After this war, the world will have
no superpower, albeit the US will remain strong both economically and
militarily."
Saudi Arabia is the number one oil exporter. Having severed its military
alliance with the U.S., the Saudi royal family may be ready to drop the
other shoe. "The Saudi Crown Prince [Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud]'s
visit to Russia was of great significance and the regime is talking about
closer cooperation with LUKoil and other Russian companies," says Council
on Foreign Relations oil analyst Youssef Ibrahim.
No nation is eager to upset the global currency regime. ("We do not want to
hurt prices on the market," President Putin was quick to add, at his Urals
press conference.) The Saudi princes, who value their dollar-denominated
wealth more highly than the teachings of Wahhabi Islam, are by inclination
among the least likely candidates to lead an OPEC euro-shift. Yet
relentless pressures from Ariel Sharon's Israel, its lobbyists and allies
on Capitol Hill, and from the Likkud group within the Bush administration,
have pushed the Saudis closer to the breakpoint. If Russia goes euro, they
will likely follow - sooner, if there is one more military outrage against
a sovereign Arab state. (In that sense, the fate of the dollar may be in
Sharon's hands.)
Iran, the world's fifth largest oil exporter, would go euro in an instant,
once it saw others headed for the door. Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez
relishes the idea. His nation exports about as much oil as Iran.
Muslim Indonesia, the oil giant of the Pacific with huge contracts to
supply the Chinese, actively debates the merits of the euro. In an April 17
report filed by Bloomberg's Tokyo bureau ("Indonesia May Dump Dollar; Rest
of Asia, Too?"), Indonesian Vice President Hamzah Haz was quoted: "One
thing is for sure, the adoption of the euro as an alternative means of
payments could be an effective solution to speculative dollar-oriented
dealings.'' [...]
A kind of international redlining will increasingly make itself felt,
but not seen. The Bush men believe they are willing into existence a New
American Century, while in reality they are creating an America-phobic
planet in which the U.S. has earned an invisible but powerfully
consequential non-favored nation status. Having invented the concept of
globalism, the United States will be consigned to pariah status - and
shrink, until it learns to live by human norms and scales.
Think of an oil-producer switch to the euro as the redlining of America.
www.blackcommentator.com
Last edited by lopaka3 on 27-10-2003 15:57; edited 1 time in total |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 16:27 Post subject: |
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lopaka: Thanks for starting this thread as it really needed another one spun off from that UL one:
http://www.forteantimes.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11482
As it touches on a broad swathe of different subjects some of which have come up in different threads but also need a meta thread of its own.
As well as the business with the Euro a lot of recent conflicts all have aspects related to the control of oil from the obvious (Iraq and Afghanistan) to the less obvious (Serbia/Bosnia and Chechnya).
I have to take my dog to the vet (again) but I'll throw some other thoughts in later 
Emps |
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| brianellwood MAD HATTER
Mad Hatter Joined: 10 Nov 2001 Total posts: 823 Location: kernow,u.k. Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 17:25 Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | The Bush men launched their offensive largely to ensure that oil would be priced in dollars |
" and remain so..."
This bears out what I understood, but was mis-informed in the sense that I thought Russia's oil was already traded in euros.
Did anyone see the film a week or so back (C4, I think) which covered the failed military coup in Venezuela. Interesting that the people who failed vanished into America, it seems. |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 17:46 Post subject: |
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As I sai din the other thread a lot of recent events have been oil-related. It is largely as an aim to get control of the oil from OPEC.
The debacle over the Euro is still a minor one but will beocme icnreasingly important in the next decade or so and could prove to be a massive issue.
The UK is key in this as we use dollars to price our Brent Crude (numbers are the references - see main article for them):
| Quote: | The only serious threat to the dollar's international dominance at the moment is the euro. Next year, when the European Union acquires ten new members, its gross domestic product will be roughly the same as that of the US, and its population 60% bigger. If the euro is adopted by all the members of the union, which suffers from none of the major underlying crises afflicting the US economy, it will begin to look like a more stable and more attractive investment than the dollar. Only one further development would then be required to unseat the dollar as the pre-eminent global currency: nations would need to start trading oil in euros.
Until last week, this was already beginning to happen. In November 2000, Saddam Hussein insisted that Iraq's oil be bought in euros.3 When the value of the euro rose, the country's revenues increased accordingly. As the analyst William Clark has suggested, the economic threat this represented might have been one of the reasons why the US government was so anxious to evict Saddam.4 But it may be unable to resist the greater danger.
Last year, Javad Yarjani, a senior official at OPEC, the oil producers' cartel, put forward several compelling reasons why his members might one day start selling their produce in euros.5 Europe is the Middle East's biggest trading partner; it imports more oil and petrol products than the US; it has a bigger share of global trade; and its external accounts are better balanced. One key tipping point, he suggested, could be the adoption of the euro by Europe's two principal oil producers: Norway and the United Kingdom, whose Brent crude is one of the "markers" for international oil prices. "This might", Yarjani said, "create a momentum to shift the oil pricing system to euros."6
If this happens, then oil importing nations will no longer need dollar reserves in order to buy oil. The demand for the dollar will fall, and its value is likely to decline. As the dollar slips, central banks will start to move their reserves into safer currencies, such as the euro and possibly the yen and the yuan, precipitating further slippage. The US economy, followed rapidly by US power, could then be expected to falter or collapse. |
http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=572
And this leads into what this that I quoted in the other thread about the rabid anti-Euro lies some of the press are spreading:
| Quote: | | I think the first thing we must recognise is that the "patriotism" which informs the attacks on the European Union is fake. The newspapers responsible for most of the hysteria about straight bananas and regulated sausages are owned and run by a Canadian (Conrad Black) and an Australian with American citizenship (Rupert Murdoch). These men seem to care nothing for the "British values" their papers claim to defend. Their conglomerates are based in North America, and they have much less of a presence in continental Europe. They would appear, therefore, to possess a powerful incentive for dragging Britain away from the European Union, and handing it, alive and kicking, to the US. |
http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=593
The current main play is over the Caspian oil field which if exploited would help destroy OPECs control over the oil (and the US). I'll get on to that in a mo..............
[edit: I thought it best to remove the subject - I was eluding to Clinton's "its about the economy stupid" but there is room for misunderstanding so I'll err on the side of caution ]
Emps
Last edited by Mighty_Emperor on 28-10-2003 01:23; edited 1 time in total |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 18:07 Post subject: Breaking the hold of OPEC |
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Soooo it is the Caspian Sea oil field that has got a lot of attention (as well as the war in Iraq of course which would get the US some levearge with OPEC):
| Quote: | The world's oil reserves, the depletion analysis centre claims, appear to be declining almost as swiftly as the North sea's. Conventional oil supplies will peak within five or 10 years, and decline by around 2 million barrels per day every year from then on. New kinds of fossil fuel have only a limited potential to ameliorate the coming crisis. In the Middle East, the only nation which could significantly increase its output is Iraq.
In 2001, a report sponsored by the US Council on Foreign Relations and the Baker Institute for Public Policy began to spell out some of the implications of this decline for America's national security. The problem, it noted, is that "the American people continue to demand plentiful and cheap energy without sacrifice or inconvenience". Transport, for example, is responsible for 66% of the petroleum the US burns. Simply switching from "light trucks" (the giant gas-guzzlers many Americans drive) to ordinary cars would save nearly a million barrels per day of crude oil. But, as the president's dad once said, "the American way of life is not up for negotiation."
"The world," the report continues, "is currently precariously close to utilising all of its available global oil production capacity." The impending crisis is increasing "US and global vulnerability to disruption". Over the previous year, for example, Iraq had "effectively become a swing producer, turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest". If the global demand for oil continues to rise, world shortages could reduce the status of the US to that of "a poor developing country".
This crisis, the report insists, demands "a reassessment of the role of energy in American foreign policy... Such a strategy will require difficult tradeoffs, in both domestic and foreign policy. But there is no alternative. And there is no time to waste". By assuming "a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game", the United States will prevent any other power from exploiting its dependency and seizing the strategic initiative.
The US government has not been slow to act upon such intelligence. Over the past two years, it has been seizing all the Caspian oil it can lay hands on, cutting out both Russia and Iran by negotiating to pipe it out through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Afghanistan. Last week, though all the sages of the British and American right insisted during the Afghan war that it couldn't possibly happen, the presidents of Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and Pakistan met to discuss the first of the Afghan pipelines. American soldiers have now been stationed in Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan and Georgia, all of which are critical to the Caspian oil trade. According to the security firm Stratfor, "the US military presence will help ensure that a majority of oil and gas from the Caspian basin will go westward - bypassing the United States' geopolitical rivals, Russia and China". The reason why Vladimir Putin is so determined to keep Chechnya under Russian control, whatever the cost to both the Chechens and the Russians may be, is that Chechnya is one of the last available routes for Caspian oil. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,830012,00.html
And it is this network of pipelines that has been the cause of much of the recent strife.
Afghanistan is the obvious route:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,579071,00.html
but the previous Azeri/Aremenian problems started at the time Caspian oil was first being majorly exploited. To hedge its bets pipelines will also have to run across Turkey (and Azerbaijan) but it can't go the obvious route which is via SE Turkey to the Med as this is all Kurdish controlled areas and the US wouldn't stand for the possibility that the PKK could hold them to ransom) and so it has to go to the Black Sea (although BP may be going to run an underground pipeline through the region). This raises another problem as the Bosphorus is at its current capacity and so the oil needs to be offloaded and pumped over land and the obvious route is to take it across to the Adriatic but this means it would have to pass through Montenegro (and bits of Croatia, etc. depending on the exact route) but this region was highly unstable until we sorted it all out:
| Quote: | During the 1999 Balkans war, some of the critics of Nato's intervention alleged that the western powers were seeking to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea. This claim was widely mocked. The foreign secretary Robin Cook observed that "there is no oil in Kosovo". This was, of course, true but irrelevant. An eminent commentator for this paper clinched his argument by recording that the Caspian sea is "half a continent away, lodged between Iran and Turkmenistan".
For the past few weeks, a freelance researcher called Keith Fisher has been doggedly documenting a project which has, as far as I can discover, has been little-reported in any British, European or American newspaper. It is called the Trans-Balkan pipeline, and it's due for approval at the end of next month. Its purpose is to secure a passage for oil from the Caspian sea.
The line will run from the Black sea port of Burgas to the Adriatic at Vlore, passing through Bulgaria, Macedonia and Albania. It is likely to become the main route to the west for the oil and gas now being extracted in central Asia. It will carry 750,000 barrels a day: a throughput, at current prices, of some 0m a month.
The project is necessary, according to a paper published by the US Trade and Development Agency last May, because the oil coming from the Caspian sea "will quickly surpass the safe capacity of the Bosphorus as a shipping lane". The scheme, the agency notes, will "provide a consistent source of crude oil to American refineries", "provide American companies with a key role in developing the vital east-west corridor", "advance the privatisation aspirations of the US government in the region" and "facilitate rapid integration" of the Balkans "with western Europe". |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,438134,00.html
This map shows the various proposed routes:
http://www.bsrec.bg/taskforce/SYNERGY/oilprojects2.html#viewmap
See also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,690153,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,446490,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,182227,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,853447,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/story/0,11319,821096,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,959516,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/ethics/story/0,12651,851000,00.html
http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,631434,00.html
Also see the Garudian's Oil section:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/oil/
Sorry for just quoting Monbiot and the Grauniad but as I read the paper I know where the information is kept - I'll dig out some more firsthand details later.
Emps |
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| lopaka3 Great Old One Joined: 17 Sep 2001 Total posts: 2154 Location: Near the corner of a Big Continent Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 18:30 Post subject: yes, but... |
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it may not be that simple. Quoting myself from a now-locked thread:
There was a fascinating article in the 7 October issue of The New Yorker magazine (sorry, no link) by Jon Lee Anderson entitiled "Our New Best Friend". It is about the vast oil reserves located off the West African nation of Sao Tome and Principe (estimated up to four billion barrels crude) and the US designs on it and non-middle eastern supplies in general. USA imports 50% of its oil currently, suppliers one through five are Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico and Nigeria. So even now, there is less dependency on Middle Eastern sources than is generally thought.
Two things that were cited as making African oil especially desirable by the bigwigs are that one, most of it that comes from places like Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, S.T. & P., etc is located far offshore in the deep ocean, so the natives don't notice it being taken as much. And two, these tend to be Christian-majority countries, so no having to mess with angry Wahhabi fundamentalists. The US is rumored to build a military base in Sao Tome, to protect *our* Gulf of Guinea security interests.
EDIT: I should have noted that this was posted long enough ago that it was the 7 OCT 2002 issue I referenced, not this year.
Last edited by lopaka3 on 27-10-2003 18:41; edited 1 time in total |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 27-10-2003 18:42 Post subject: |
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lopaka:
| Quote: | | it may not be that simple |
No it isn't - things are obviously more complex than it just being about the oil and it probably operates at different levels (the most have a number of think tanks developing various strategies to on differnt timescales and in differnt areas so not all the eggs aare in one basket), however, these African fields will require a lot of infrastructure putting in place while a lot of the Caspian oil extraction infrastructure is in place - we have just had to do a bit of 'housekeeping' to make sure it can be pumped out.
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 28-10-2003 17:53 Post subject: Central Asia |
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The former Soviet republics in Central Asia are critical to this as they are outisde of OPEC and the US has gained some influence over them.
Khazakstan has vast mineral wealth and has kept its head down and ploughed ahead with plans for growth (they have unlimited potential - and the old USSR space launch areas?). They did do something interesting and move their capital mainly (I believe) due to the old one being too close to the border.
There is an interesting article today in the Garudian about uzbekistan which doesn't have the assets of Khazakstan and i smore reliant on US support but its human rights record stinks:
| Quote: | | There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death. |
however, it is a very important area in the region:
| Quote: | | But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1072313,00.html
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| Mighty_Emperor Divine Wind
Joined: 18 Aug 2002 Total posts: 19943 Location: Mongo Age: 42 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 11-11-2003 16:59 Post subject: |
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm:
| Quote: | Over the four months before the coalition forces invaded Iraq, Saddam's government made a series of increasingly desperate offers to the United States. In December, the Iraqi intelligence services approached Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, with an offer to prove that Iraq was not linked to the September 11 attacks, and to permit several thousand US troops to enter the country to look for weapons of mass destruction. If the object was regime change, then Saddam, the agents claimed, was prepared to submit himself to internationally monitored elections within two years. According to Mr Cannistraro, these proposals reached the White House, but were "turned down by the president and vice-president".
By February, Saddam's negotiators were offering almost everything the US government could wish for: free access to the FBI to look for weapons of mass destruction wherever it wanted, support for the US position on Israel and Palestine, even rights over Iraq's oil. Among the people they contacted was Richard Perle, the security adviser who for years had been urging a war with Iraq. He passed their offers to the CIA. Last week he told the New York Times that the CIA had replied: "Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad".
Saddam Hussein, in other words, appears to have done everything possible to find a diplomatic alternative to the impending war, and the US government appears to have done everything necessary to prevent one. |
and:
| Quote: | The same thing happened before the war with Afghanistan. On September 20 2001, the Taliban offered to hand Osama bin Laden to a neutral Islamic country for trial if the US presented them with evidence that he was responsible for the attacks on New York and Washington. The US rejected the offer. On October 1, six days before the bombing began, they repeated it, and their representative in Pakistan told reporters: "We are ready for negotiations. It is up to the other side to agree or not. Only negotiation will solve our problems." Bush was asked about this offer at a press conference the following day. He replied: "There's no negotiations. There's no calendar. We'll act on [sic] our time."
On the same day, Tony Blair, in his speech to the Labour party conference, ridiculed the idea that we could "look for a diplomatic solution". "There is no diplomacy with Bin Laden or the Taliban regime... I say to the Taliban: surrender the terrorists; or surrender power. It's your choice." Well, they had just tried to exercise that choice, but George Bush had rejected it. |
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1082250,00.html |
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| Jerry_B Great Old One Joined: 15 Apr 2002 Total posts: 8265 |
| Posted: 11-11-2003 17:21 Post subject: |
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One thing about countries like Kazakhstan, etc. is that, if Russian goes Euro with it's oil, they're likely to follow suit. It would be in their interests to form an economic bloc with Russia - they still share too much infrastructure, and I doubt the US or the World Bank, etc. is willing to completely bankroll their changing over from old Soviet-era stuff. They will become more important players in teh whole deal, but the US may get nudged out of teh whole equation - not in any bad 'oh dear, this could create a war' way, but the US just may not be a factor any more.
The problem the US faces is that it may have shot itself in the foot. It needs oil - more than it can produce domestically. If it keeps trying to grab it from elsewhere militarily, it will soon run out of money. If it doesn't change it's foreign policies to being more benign, it will gradually face isolation and stagnation. It's already facing a trade war with Europe over steel prices, and is unlikely to win it. So it may gradually fade as a world power with a whimper and not a bang. Slowly but surely. The more it spends on extending it's own foreign policy, the more it indebts itself to those other nations who don't necessarily see eye-to-eye with it, and who may one day become economically stronger.
I don't think this will cause open warfare, so don't worry about that |
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| oll_lewis mi mou tous kiklous taratte
sea below Joined: 14 Feb 2002 Total posts: 3071 Location: Woolfardisworthy Age: 33 Gender: Male |
| Posted: 13-11-2003 00:07 Post subject: |
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The reason dolars are used is that the Dolar, allthough now not much more than the paper it's printed on, is by large a stable curentcy of single large post industrial nation. the Euro is not stable it tends to bob up and down like a yo-yo as it is still a very new curency and aplys to several different countrys with difering economys.
Probably the Euro will be in a position to replace the dolar in international calculations in 20 years or so but people are stubbon if they have become acustomed to something, there are still people in britain for example that refuse to use metric measurements dispite their being more acurate and decimalised, so I wouldn't expect things to change anytime soon. |
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| ginoide Great Old One Joined: 07 Sep 2001 Total posts: 999 Gender: Unknown |
| Posted: 13-11-2003 00:58 Post subject: |
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unfortunately our sons will probably have to witness (from a good distance, i hope) the war between the us and the european union, due (among other things) to the dollar vs. euro thing.
riccardo "the not so optimistic prophet" ginoide |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 13-11-2003 01:01 Post subject: Euro V Dollar |
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Gold nears $400
Fueled by weakening dollar, precious metal climbs to its highest level in 7-1/2 years.
November 12, 2003: 12:10 PM EST
Is it possible that O.P.E.C will start trading in Euro's instead of the Dollar?
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gold prices Wednesday closed in on the psychologically important $400 mark, advancing to 7-1/2 year highs in New York, as the dollar's weakness against the euro made gold cheaper for European investors and commodity funds.
Gold price for December delivery broke above the 2003 high set in September after London trading wrapped up for the day, rising to $397.00 an ounce, its highest since March 1996. At 11:30 a.m. ET, the benchmark contract was up $7.20 at $395.60, off a low at $387.80.
Spot gold was quoted at $395.05, topping at $395.85. It closed at $387.85 in New York Tuesday. |
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| Anonymous |
| Posted: 13-11-2003 01:04 Post subject: |
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| Why else do you think they want an EU army? |
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