This is the sentence that interested me the most. Notice that the U$ recently placed sanctions on venezuala, they aren't keen on Russia, invaded Iraq, threatened Iran, forced the libyan revolution etc. They really are a nasty piece of work. Why not accept that since the euro is the most commonly found currency now, all petroleum deals should be done using the abundant currency? It is far more practical than spending billions invading places, just to protect the dollar, which they've just spent loads of to invade. It's not good for world relations or the US economy.
It really is good for the US economy. Read the article again. It's worth something like $500 billion a year.
And where will the money that they spend on these wars go? To US owned arms companies. No former US Presidents or relatives of those Presidents benefited financially from those wars through their investments in those companies, though...
Confidence in the US dollar is eroding as it is, countries outside the debt bubble such as Australia and New Zealand are finding their currencies becoming ever stronger while the rest of the world barely notices, as Sterling, Euro, Dollar are all weakening at a similar pace to each other. I owe a few hundred thousand in mortgage debt. My interest rate in the UK is 2.0% on a near bottomless tracker - yet the inflation rate has hit 4.4%. This means that the persons who lent me the money are effectively losing 2.4% per annum for going to the effort of lending me that money. If you had further money to lend, what would you do with it? Well stick it in Australian currency, gold, silver, Iron ore - anything which is likely to actually be worth something relative to someone at some point. It's not clear if the Euro or Dollar will be worth anything close to what they are in even the near future.
I think the idea of a single currency this side of the atlantic was a bad move. At least we had the foresight to avoid it. The problem is that some countries are irresponsible with money, and that leaves fiscally responsible countries, such as germany, in the doghouse with them. If we all had individual currencies again, things might be better.
It's €1.13 to £1.00 right now mate - when I first moved to Malta five years ago it was €1.50 to £1.00. As bad as the headlines are for the Euro, at least in simple value terms Sterling seems to be performing weaker (which is not necessarily a bad thing as British exports were much too expensive for years). My point is all the major economies with the debt issue are all seeing runs on their currencies, it just isn't obvious to the people on the street as these are the major world currencies and not many people compare them in their every day life vs gold or New Zealand dollars.
