[The Beast1]

A member somewhere in this forum mentioned something about how oil is technically what is driving the economy.

I did a search on it and discovered something called "Petrodollar Warfare" and then I stumbled upon the collapse of the petrodollar.

I found this article online: http://ftmdaily.com/preparing-for-the-co...ar-system/

While I am sceptical of non - "official" sources it drew some parallels that blew my mind. The article even brings up how the US's "Welfare and Warewar" model brought forth this economic and foreign policy agenda. It really did a stellar job connecting the dots.

I don't think illegals, china, and "emerging markets" are really to blame for the destruction of our manufacturing sector. It looks like we can blame the financial elite for setting this system up (as it clearly benefits them).

Ideas and comments? Thanks to the unnamed poster who showed me this. My mind is currently blown.

[cardguy]

I have read this book. It is very good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Petrodollar-Warf...0865715149

And one of the best ways to learn about this area is to watch this brilliant geopolitical history of oil by one of the most famous comedians in the UK. It is very good:

[CactusCat589]

This has been the subject of ample formal scholarship. Professor David E. Spiro of Cornell University made Freedom of Information Act requests to the Department of the Treasury and the CIA to confirm its existence when he published The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony in 1999. He found out our state officials did negotiate with the House of Saud, and proved that part of the conditions was that OPEC would directly invest its profits in U.S. treasuries, and would require its customers to hold dollar-denominated assets such as T-bills, Fannie & Freddie bonds, and other U.S. federal agency bonds in their foreign exchange reserves.

Professor William Clarke of University of Michigan University, Ann Arbor has done research on the subject as well.

There were two major negotiations in brokering this deal: one by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger under Nixon in 1973, and later Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal under Carter in 1979.

Let's look at the official treasury.gov website: http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/...ts/mfh.txt

Quote:

MAJOR FOREIGN HOLDERS OF TREASURY SECURITIES
(in billions of dollars)
HOLDINGS 1/ AT END OF PERIOD


May Apr Mar Feb Jan Dec Nov Oct Sep Aug Jul Jun May
Country 2013 2013* 2013* 2013* 2013* 2012* 2012* 2012* 2012* 2012* 2012* 2012* 2012*
------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------ ------

China, Mainland 1315.9 1290.7 1270.3 1251.9 1214.2 1220.4 1183.1 1169.9 1153.6 1155.2 1160.0 1147.0 1164.0
Japan 1111.0 1112.7 1114.3 1105.5 1103.9 1111.2 1117.7 1131.9 1128.5 1120.9 1119.8 1108.4 1107.2
Oil Exporters 3/ 266.3 271.7 265.1 256.8 261.6 262.0 259.1 262.2 267.2 269.1 268.4 270.2 260.6
...

So it is fairly in the open. At the bottom of the page, it lists the oil exporters:

Quote:

Oil exporters include Ecuador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Gabon, Libya, and Nigeria.

Tells you the story of our foreign policy of the last decade. The animosity towards and constant assassination attempts on Hugo Chavez, why Gaddafi was deposed, why we invested Iraq after it invaded Kuwait, why we're threatening Syria, which has a mutual defense treaty with Iran. This is why we invested trillions of dollars in building the largest military in the world.

Also, notice how not one mainstream macroeconomist or Keynesian or neoclassical textbook accounts for this system. It's a massive flaw of macroeconomics (to say nothing of the ongoing precious metals suppression in the COMEX via the futures markets). This is Dr. Paul Krugman being asked explicitly about oil being denominated in dollars, and he immediately deflects the question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZoxJg1dNBc.

It's also the keystone in the U.S. economic strategy: Post-Keynesian economist Professor Michael Hudson explains how deficit financing becomes not a weakness, but an economic weapon of a small banking elite that exports depression onto the rest of the world, in Super Imperialism and stripping assets in return for loans that can't be repaid, through the IMF and the World Bank.

The key point is that this is how paper economies function: when nations go this deep into debt and debase their currencies to this extent, they become permanent war economies.

Swiss economist Marc Faber has been saying this debt supercycle will end either in a voluntary depression in a period of deleveraging, or war.

This is Representative Howard Buffett's address in 1948 when we were still on the gold standard (in theory), but ordinary people could no longer redeem their fiat for gold:

Congressman Buffett Wrote:

But we can be approaching the critical stage. When that
day arrives, our political rulers will probably find that
foreign war and ruthless regimentation is the cunning
alternative to domestic strife. That was the way out for
the paper-money economy of Hitler and others.

He saw this coming 65 years ago, and so did all the other sound currency proponents.

That's why our leaders have been pushing us toward war with Iran, despite the Ford administration approving the nuclear enrichment program, despite the CIA and Mossad agreeing they've yet to even decide to build a nuclear weapon. It doesn't matter - the Senate voted 90-1 last year that it would take containment off the table, and adopt a pre-emptive policy of war. So even our leaders know and acknowledge that Iran STILL has no intention of building nuclear warheads.

I'm forecasting the de-facto reinstatement of the draft here with the recent legislation in floating the student loan interest rates, combined with generous military debt forgiveness programs: http://www.rooshvforum.network/thread-26325-...pid501214.

Everyone knows that interest rates on the debt will rise. We saw a glimpse of that in May and June this year when Chairman Bernanke tested the waters with an announcement of tapering on QE - the markets immediately began flatlining. Recovery is impossible. Exit strategy and return to tight monetary policy is impossible without killing the U.S. economy, all the while the illusion of this false prosperity is dissipating month by month. So it appears that war is the solution.

It's always the same story, people.

[The Beast1]

Cactuscat, thanks a ton for that!

I saw your post on the de-facto reinstatement of the draft in another thread. Did you happen to by chance mention the petrodollar in another thread? I'm betting it was you.

[scorpion]

The petrodollar is the basis of U.S. geopolitical power. It's the only reason the U.S. has been able to maintain its superpower status and live far beyond its means for the past several decades. When Nixon closed the gold window in 1973, there was nothing backing the dollar anymore. Giving the dollar a de facto oil backing by ensuring that oil was only sold for dollars was one of the shrewdest and most profitable economic/political moves in history. As CactusCat pointed out, this allows us to exchange paper and electronic 1's and 0's for the most valuable commodity in the world, and allows us to sell that same paper and 1's and 0's to other countries who need to buy oil. It's literally a license to print money, on an international scale.

This arrangement can only be maintained, however, as long as the major oil producers agree to continue denominating oil sales in U.S. dollars. This is where the U.S. military comes in. Have you ever wondered why it's so important that we have far and away the most dominant military in the world? It's because the U.S. military is the enforcer for the petrodollar mafia that ensures no one gets out of line. Saddam Hussein wanted to start selling his oil for Euros. That didn't end up so well for him. Gaddafi wanted to introduce a gold-backed African dinar currency in which he would sell his oil. He's dead now, too. This is also why Hugo Chavez was a persona non grata for so many years: he was a constant thorn in the side of the petrodollar system.

The big oil companies and the big banks work hand in hand with the U.S. government to maintain the supremacy of the petrodollar, which is the single most important objective of the U.S. government. Without the petrodollar, everything comes crashing down catastrophically, because the U.S. can no longer print the world reserve currency out of thin air. We'd be forced to actually live within our means. U.S. standards of living and U.S. international power would decrease substantially. That simply won't be allowed to happen. There will be war first, a big one if necessary. The petrodollar system is far too profitable and powerful to give up without a fight to the death.

[CactusCat589]

I mentioned it recently. I've seen other members explain it in a few geopolitics threads, where someone recommended James Rickards' Currency Wars and also mentioned the petrodollar.

To give more numbers in the context of what Scorpion explained:

This is the monetary base in the U.S.:



Before we left the gold standard, growth was flat. After 1971 and 1973, it takes off.

The euro is becoming a similar story:



It became a petrocurrency in 2001-2002, when the UN approved Hussein's Oil for Food program, when he began selling oil in euros. The U.S. forced Iraq back onto the dollar, but the euro monetary base takes off as the Iranian oil bourse opens, then fluctuated with the sovereign debt crisis as various member nations went bust and the IMF forces deleveraging in its austerity programs, before resuming its course.

As long as international demand for a currency exists, countries can export inflation abroad, who are pressured to expand their money supply as well to absorb the excess currency. This. I would argue that this is one of the major reasons we've seen the turmoil in the Middle East, the most recent example being Egypt where inflation arrived at such a level that for the working class paying for food took up 40% of their entire income. The IMF is currently trying to coax the interim government into a $4.8 billion loan, which the Egyptians cannot fathomable ever repay. I'm also pretty sure that conditions will include Egyptian oil and an agreement that threats of blockading the Suez Canal will never materialize.

This is the same story as that of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, etc. They were offered loans they could never repay, in return they liquidated their gold reserves and other national assets, only to go bust trying to service the debt and come back and face the same deal a second time a few years later. It's driven by the same members of the Council of Foreign Relations: the Rockefellers, Soros, Federal Reserve members, Goldman Sachs chairmen.

This is the corporate membership of the Council of Foreign Relations:

Quote:

Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Chevron Corporation
ExxonMobil Corporation
Goldman Sachs, Inc.
Hess Corporation
JPMorgan Chase & Co
McKinsey and Company
Nasdaq OMX Group

The same institutions that triggered the Lehman collapse in 2008, are now carrying out PM suppression through the process of the Fed leasing gold bars to them after which they rehypothecate them into dozens of ETFs that they proceed to sell in naked shorts, and setting up EU members such as Greece through masking debt and then launching speculative attacks through credit default swaps, etc. Then in the bankrupticies, they strip-mine the countries of their assets in exchange for fiat.

[The Beast1]

Gentlemen, I think we have single handedly found the entire source for the maladies of our society and culture. This is where the PR curtain ends. I knew there had to be more of a story going on. This is definitely it.


Edit: Cactuscat, the thread you linked to about student loan debt and it being a way to reinstate the draft was where i first read of the petrodollar.

[CactusCat589]

I'll also organize a beginning-to-end post on how the precious metals suppression is done, because that is on equal footing as the petrodollar as the key to this entire thing. Without that, the bond market undergoes an epic implosion. Social Security, regular American citizens with bond holdings, the countries abroad, OPEC, all become net sellers of treasuries. (Not to mention that it also discredits mainstream macroeconomics completely.)

The financial website ZeroHedge explains it very well, but across several articles and it is confusing to piece together, because it entails familiarity with how future contracts work, loopholes in rehypothecation laws between the US and UK, how the Federal Reserve and the bullion banks react, how the mainstream financial media trumpeted up "Gold is in a bubble" leading up to April 11, and figuring out to interpret the CME group (which tracks Comex's physical deliveries) report.

There's been an investigation by the CFTC (U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission) on this ongoing since 2010, but it's been stalled by the Department of Justice and SEC. The reason it's been going on for so long is that this fiat system depends on this lawlessness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Anti-T..._Committee
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Magu...tleblower)

I was still harboring doubt on all of this up till April 11 this year, when I took a leap of faith and liquidated my family's GLD (paper gold) positions when the signal appeared for those in on the know: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04...week.html.

(All of this makes fantastic Game material btw.)

[Kickb]

Not sure what this thread is about, but If anyone wants to invest in oil, send me a pm (as long as you make over $200k a year or your networth is over a million dollars excluding your house and cars)