Weird Links

 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/28/business...

Iran is planning to stop using the U.S. dollar to price oil, with less than half of its oil income now paid in the U.S. currency, Iran's central bank governor said...Iran's central bank is also shifting to holding its foreign reserves in a basket of 20 currencies and away from U.S. dollars, which now make up less than 20 percent of the reserves.

Now might be a good time to re-read a pre-Iraq invasion article called "The Real Reasons for the Upcoming War With Iraq: A Macroeconomic and Geostrategic Analysis of the Unspoken Truth", which puts forward the argument that Saddam sealed his fate when he switched the trade currency for Iraqi oil from US Dollars to Euros in November of 2000.

Why does it matter? Well as I understand it, if the Dollar stops being the global reserve currency for oil then its value will weaken; to quote from the 2003 article:

The reality is that the "safe harbor" status of the U.S. dollar since 1945 rests on it being the international reserve currency. Thus it has assumed the role of sole currency for global oil transactions (ie. `petrodollar'). The U.S. prints hundreds of billions of fiat dollars, which U.S. consumers provide to other nations via the purchase of imported goods. These dollars become "petro-dollars" when are then used by those nation states to purchase oil/energy from OPEC producers (except Iraq, to some degree Venezuela, and perhaps Iran in the near future). Approximately $600 to $800 billion `petrodollars' are annually from OPEC and invested back into the U.S. via Treasury Bills or other dollar-denominated assets such as U.S. stocks, bonds, real estate, etc. This recycling bolsters the dollar's international liquidity value.

Consider this alongside the following very interesting paragraph (written back in 2003, remember):

...other risks might arise if the Iraq war goes poorly or becomes prolonged. It is possible that civil unrest may unfold in Iran, Saudi Arabia or other OPEC members in the Middle East. Such events could foster the very situation this administration is trying to prevent: another OPEC member switching to euros as their oil transaction currency standard.

Thus the linked news here is interesting because it means that Iran is trying the hit the US where it'll hurt the most, right in the wallet