[Feb, 2006] Syria Picks Euros Over Dollars
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ABA36728-9F9D-4A2C-8F37-9C3230B7E971.htm
Syria has switched all of the state's foreign currency transactions to euros from dollars amid a political confrontation with the United States. Duraid Durgham, the head of state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria, said on Monday: "This is a precaution. We are talking about billions of dollars. Switching to the euro will help us avoid settlement problems in the United States.
"The move is also needed to avoid complications with our correspondent banks, which have expressed a preference to deal in euro under these circumstances." He said the switch would mean euro pricing for crude oil sales, a major foreign currency earner for Syria.
The latest official figures show Syria imported $6.7 billion goods in 2004 and exported $5.4 billion. Oil output is about 400,000 barrels a day. In 2004, Washington imposed sanctions that prohibited certain US exports to Syria, severed financial ties with the Commercial Bank of Syria, and froze the assets of Syrians believed to be linked to terrorism. After the assassination of Rafiq al-Hariri, the former Lebanese prime minister, a year ago, the US led foreign pressure on Syria for its alleged role in the killing.
One economist said the euro move by the Commercial Bank of Syria "looked like a kind of pre-emptive action aimed at making their foreign assets safer and preventing them from getting frozen in case of any conflict".
[Jan 05, 2006] – Treasury Secretary John Snow
“I’m just back from China recently and pressed them on [the currency] issue. And found that they are putting in place mechanisms to allow the currency to have greater flexibility....So I think we’re on the right course.”
[Nov, 2005] Money on the Move: Seeking Safe Haven Out of Syria
http://www2.debka.com/article.php?aid=1104
Influential Syrian VIPs appear to have read the UN resolution carefully last week and are absconding. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources reveal large cash withdrawals from Syrian banks, currency conversions and transfers to banks outside the country. The flight of money was accompanied by an exodus of some of the leading families of Damascus – anxious to beat "the ban on travel and assets freeze" mandated by the UN resolution for suspects in the Hariri murder plot.
The largest capital transfer – estimated at $6-7bn – was made by the tycoon Rami Makhlouf who lost no time in removing himself, business and family from Damascus to Dubai. Makhlouf’s defection is a mortal blow for Assad and his shrinking circle of supporters. He is not only the manager of the Assad clans’ finances, his is also a close kinsman; Bashar’s mother is his aunt, sister of his father General Adnan Makhlouf, who served the late president Hafez Assad in a top position of trust as commander of the presidential guard.
His huge capital transfer and removal of his business center from the Syrian capital are capable of bringing the national economy crashing down about Assad’s ears.
[Nov, 2005] Iran to Switch to Euros
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C1C0C9B3-DDA9-42E2-AE9C-B7CDBA08A6E9.htm
[Emilie Rutledge is a British economist who is currently based at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai].
Iran's decision to set up an oil and associated derivatives market next year has generated a great deal of interest. This is primarily because of Iran’s reported intention to invoice energy contracts in euros rather than dollars. It is primarily the US which stands to lose out from any move away from the petrodollar status quo, it is the world’s largest importer of oil and a move away from invoicing oil in dollars to euros will undoubtedly have a negative effect on its economy. The current petrodollar system greatly benefits the US; it enables it to effectively control the world oil-market as the dollar has become the fiat currency for international trade.
George Perkovich, of the Washington based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has argued that Iran’s decision to consider invoicing oil sales in euros is "part of a very intelligent strategy to go on the offense in every way possible and mobilize other actors against the US."
[Jul, 2004] Two Credible Reasons for Invading Iraq
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1270414,00.html
There were only two credible reasons for invading Iraq: control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world's reserve currency. In 1999, Iran mooted pricing its oil in euros, and in late 2000 Saddam made the switch for Iraqi oil. In early 2002 Bush placed Iran and Iraq in the axis of evil. If the other Opec countries had followed Saddam's move to euros, the consequences for Bush could have been huge. Worldwide switches out of the dollar, on top of the already huge deficit, would have led to a plummeting dollar, a runaway from US markets and dramatic upheavals in the US.
Al Qaeda Economic Objective [Imperial Hubris]
Just under the noise, death, and rhetoric yielded by the foregoing episodes of war lies a largely ignored factor that may constitute al Qaeda’s main war effort – the steady bleeding of the U.S. economy. The immediate impact is massive expenditures – at all levels of American government – that will add permanently to the size and cost of government. In addition to the cost of hiring thousands of federal employees for homeland security purposes; acquiring buildings, equipment, and training to make them effective; and requiring proportionate upgrading at state, municipal, and local levels; there lie what must be substantial amounts of unpredictable expenditures for overtime wages – in government and business alike – whenever Washington raises the threat level, or when high levels of security are provided at public places or functions heretofore not seen as serious security risks. The September 11 attacks were not apocalyptic onslaughts on Western civilization. They were country-specific attacks meant to inflict substantial, visible, and quantifiable human and economic destruction on America.
Notable Quotes
Whoever controls the volume of money in our country is absolute master of all industry and all commerce and when you realise that the entire system is very easily controlled, one way or another, by a few powerful men at the top, you will not have to be told how periods of inflation and depression originate." -- President James A. Garfield, just a few weeks before he was assassinated on July 2nd, 1881.
"Give me control of a nation's currency and I care not who makes it's laws." -- Mayer Amschel Bauer Rothschild
“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes." --Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli of England, in 1844.
