Words from the Rising Republics

June 14, 2012

THE PETRODOLLAR

By Earl Griffin

Published in The Southern Star, Newspaper

 

In 2007, I wrote some five or six articles appearing in The Southern Star. The articles dealt with the coming financial storm. Some predictions were included: These proved to be valid. At the time these were met with doubt as being reasonab1e assumptions. The economy was progressing with no clouds in sight. A huge Real Estate bubble had developed in the economy. It could not continue to bloom without correction. You know the story from then until now.

Joe asked me if I would come up with new predictions. ~ have hesitated for several months.The situation has become so explosive that it is difficult to cover without volumes of research and lengthy articles. Not suitable for limited newspaper space.

I have watched a developing issue that has received little vetting in the media. It is a defining moment for us as a nation It is so close upon us that it should be the center of our attention, No one seems to know much about it. Those that knov are not acknowledging the coming storm.

The world of politics and finance have been ignoring and trying to prevent the replacement of the Petrodollar for years The cat is gettirig out of the bag. The weakening of our financial muscle and now the resistance of our trading partners an forcing change.

For years we appeared to be and thought of ourselves as invincible. We have now been crushed by the financial stress policing the world, going to war to secure oil and other strategic assets, bailing out our "buddies" and zombie banks.

We have let entitlements grow by the trillions while the economy has grown in the 1-2% range for the past four years as tax revenues and bonds are falling. We have no leverage.

Our exercise of power is limited. We can no longer get from the world what we want; oïl, credit, trading agreements, strategic assets on our terms.

We are dying from our consumption of "stuff" we don' need. We have a new war on the cyberspace front. This is being used around the world. We now are developing censorships at home. Abroad, over 10,000 internet sites have been destroyed

We are about to face the greatest crisis ever. There will be more money lost (and made) in the next 18-24 months fo1lowing the event than ever before. The majority will not understand what is happening. We have had some close calls over the years. We just don't get into the depths of things from sources that bring us understanding of world events.

Examples :

How about the Japanese Depression beginning in the 1990's? We are blindly following the same path; the rise of Islamic terrorism in the 90's and that terrorism would begin to replace Marxism. We were kept in the dark. The self pro­claimed Progressives in this country are nothing more thar smooth talking liars that dream of being in the elitist ruling class. You hear them, see them and read them continuously. Their eye is on Washington and its Cronyism that has sto­len our wealth, our culture, the very fabric of this nation, anc has destroyed all that was great, convertingit into a Marxisi Nanny state. We have the worst period of corruption at ev­ery level of government. Voters have sent candidates to office based solely on "Bringing the Bacon Home". The result is a if trillion National Debt, debt at every State, County and Local Government. Have you checked-debt locally? It may surprise you that other forms of debt in trillions is held by individuals and business.

 

The rise of the Internet and micro-mobile technologies ha: the power to destroy the macro-state and redefine its being.

In the overlooked article in the TEHRAN Times on Jan­uary 12, 2012, Iran, the world's second largest oil producer made a shocking announcement. One the Western press sup­pressed. It stated that in the calendar year, which begins March 29,2012, Iran would make its first move away from the Petrodollar.

Our media is designed to entertain you, not educate as to what is happening. Not to answer questions, but to question answers. Detract and distract. Amuse and confuse. Paralyze and terrorize. Make decisions on emotions, not logic. The me­dia could care less what they do or say, so long as they get the numbers to tune in.

The citizen is left in the dark. It will be difficult at first to accept or believe what news is spread before us. Washington has spent the last thirty years and trillions of dollars trying to halt the inevitable. Time has run out. .

The 'preservation of the Petrodollar was the real reason we went to war in Iraq. It is the cause of our strife with Iran. It is the reason why websites have gone dark. It is why the Secretary of State is trying to get passed a bill against freedom of information. She announced that we are in an inforrnatinr war and we are losing that war. In the past, the Western media controlled world news. There are now alternatives, and we an losing. RT Media Empire, launched seven years ago, stands for Russia Today, boasting seven hundred and fifty thousand hits daily. More viewers in Washington and New York tune in the English version of RT than any other foreign based news.

The Petrodollar deal was made between Washington and OPEC thirty-nine years ago. OPEC wanted to create a currency from a basket of currencies, including gold, made up of the world's wealthiest nations.

The U.S. had reached peak oil production in 1971 and had ibandoned the gold standard. We had run up debts in Viet­nam, ran out of oil, gold and money. Competition was rising in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Something had to be done.  President Nixon convinced the King of Saudi Arabia to accept U.S. dollars as payment for oil. Nixon pledged to protect the monarchy, its oil fields from the world, as well as develope oil recovery. This created the biggest monopoly of all time; the Dollar became the world currency and power was shifted to America.

The dollar was in an immediate bull market. All oil importing countries would now have to buy dollars to pay for oil. Acquisition required borrowing or working for the dollar. Most worked for it by manufacturing goods and products and selling to America. Japan sold its cars and other 'items. Taiwan sold its TVs, telephones and other items. South Korea came with A..C., refrigerators, washing machines and other conveniences. 2hina sold us toys, trinkets and gadgetry.

While they worked to produce goods, we sat back and printed dollars. It was Christmas every day in America. The containers came into our ports every day, goods were cheap, and we had cheap credit. We went on a wild spending spree.

These countries all accumulated billions and trillions of :lollars. Then they started buying our low-interest bonds, they were lending their dollars back so we could continue buying. Buying goods we had quit making along with things that we :lid not need. The irony is that they bought our bonds and we have now reached the bubble stage in our debt, which is soon to burst. We were able to live beyond our means, spend more than we earned. Borrow, borrow, borrow; spend, spend, spend. We bought "stuff" we had no real use for. Pure waste, lived as if there was no tomorrow. We wanted more, bigger and bet­ter. Our ability to make what we consumed disappeared. The easy life was at hand. Why do labor and production, when you didn't have to get "dirty," just get a degree and sit back. My opinion is that all labor is honorable if done well and responsi­bly; we like to be comfortable in our "Career," playing with our digital toys an average five to twenty hours a week rather than being productive in the work place.

" We have about run out of the good times. The Petrodollar is about to disappear. Iran announced that is starting a commod­ity exchange, trading in currencies other than the dollar. This was first advanced in 2006. The release was censored. In 2008, Iran started the project with petroleum based products. They are now offering oil on the open market in currencies other than the dollar. This is the reason for the sanctions of July 1st 2012, meant for Iran and anyone who dares to cross over.

IAEA, after inspections, says Iran.is nowhere near produc­ng a nuclear weapon and would take years to build maybe two bombs. Is it true? I don't know. Why did we stand back for North Korea and Pakistan to build hundreds of warheads? We have two thousand one hundred and fifty warheads ourselves. could it be that they don't produce oil that threatens the Petrodollars. Iran had been trading with the likes of India, Japan, South Korea and others for two decades. Is this going to cease? Hundreds of billions in oil and other commodities traded to other countries as well.

China, Russia, Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, South Africa, Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea, Columbia and others are doing deals and swaps with each other. Oil is their life blood. China has two oil refineries under construction in Iran. They are huge. They swapped construction for oil, you think they  will stop July 1st, 2012?     .

China opened their international currency exchange with the Chinese Yuan being the base currency. They opened May 28th, 2012 at 9:06 PM Eastern Time. Have you been told about this on the T.V., radio, or the newspaper? The Yuan will replace the dollar as the World Currency. This is likely to take place in twelve to eighteen months. The dollar could be devaluled by fifty percent when this happens. Your standard of living will immediately crash.

Have you heard any debriefing or the report of the visit of our illustrious three stooges - the Chairman of the Fed­eral Reserve, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury - to China about two weeks ago? The trio was there meeting with the Finance Minister and others? Don't we need to know? My guess was the meeting was held to discuss the inflation of the dollar. This is the dream of the flunkies in this administration. We are on the edge.

Some recent currency transactions outside the dollar include some of the following:

China-Japan 339 Billion

BRICS-(5 Nations) 170 Billion

ID SCAN & Others 120 Billion

Japan-India 15 Billion

China-UAE        5, Billion

These are trades in each nation's currency.

Remember - The one who controls energy controls the world. The Petrodollar allowed the U.S. to control the world for 39 years. This is about to end.

We have to bite the bullet now. We cannot survive another 4 years of the same spending policies and wars. Our interest on the present debt is 230 Billion annually at rock bottom rates. Imagine what it will be at when we have to pay what the Europeans are paying (7+ %).

Bin Laden may be dead; but he caused us to spend approxi­mately four trillion dollars to protect the Petrodollar. Who won? What is our energy policy? Our Department Of Energy has already spent over a trillion dollars since the Carter years. What are the results? We could have avoided these past events and maintained a bright future by just letting the Free Market work. We could have had cheap oil as we were the majority purchaser of oil. The Department of Energy had awakened and mounted an effort to develop energy resources. The problem is that the Government is incapable of developing anything other than Debt through Waste and Incompetency.

We have a normalcy bias. People tend to believe that since it has never happened before---it never will. It is part of our nature. It also makes people unable to deal with disaster, once it has occurred---people have a hard time preparing and deal­ing with something they have never experienced.

We have to become realist and prepare for a future that we have never witnessed. If you are as old as some of our local citi­zens, you can remember some difficult times. They are coming again. The difference will be in the way a less hardened, faith­ful, disciplined people will react.

It has been difficult to develop this information. Few have come forward to tell what they know. I relied on Mr. James David Davidson for most of this information. He is regarded as an expert on internatiorial economy's and finance.         Earl Griffin, Retired Banker

 

 

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