From: Hans Ehrbar (ehrbar@econ.utah.edu)
Date: Sat Feb 08 2003 - 22:14:57 EST
Response to Jerry's [8445]: I talked to several people about the currency war thing, and they seemed unconvinced, while to me it was such a revelation to hear that Iraq had switched to pricing their oil in Euros. I have been thinking about it for a long time how the USA gets away with having their national currency serve as world currency, and one of the ideas floating around in this respect is that they are a debtor who cannot go bankrupt because they have the guns. Until now I had been thinking that the anti-war movement really saves the US ruling class from themselves because the war on Iraq is not in their best interest. For the same reason I had also thought that the anti-war movement has a small but real chance to stop the war. But punishing Iraq for switching to the Euro, and at the same time grabbing so much oil under their own control that they can make OPEC powerless and can prevent other OPEC nations from switching to the Euro, is a war goal which suddenly makes the war on Iraq a thoroughly rational thing to do for the US ruling class. If they do not follow through, they may lose the dollar hegemony in a matter of five years, especially after all the political resentment against the US that Bush has set in motion. This can be catastrophic for the US economy. Not only is the US economy addicted to oil, they can also no longer survive without the privilege of being able to print dollars and buy everything in the world with their paper dollar. And the world wide public, even those who are most anti-war, has no idea that this is why they are going to war! Hans.
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