TEHRAN - How many barrels has the Group of Seven (G-7) leading industrialized nations? This neatly sums up the way in which the institutions of global governance are skewed towards the centers of finance capital in developed nations rather than the resource rich, but less developed, countries upon which they depend.
Here in Tehran, now entirely cut off from the global financial system and with the rial falling like a stone, that question has never been more relevant....
...some of the smartest people on the planet have made possibly one of the dumbest, and certainly one of the greatest, strategic errors in history. The smart people at the US State Department and Treasury have prevailed upon the craven Belgian-based SWIFT bank messaging system to entirely cut off Iran from the dollar system.
So Iran has to look outside dollar economics for solutions, and I am here to advocate an approach that addresses both problems by literally re-basing Iran's economy on the absolute value of energy rather than a black hole of debt.
Read it at Asia Times Online
Introducing the E-3
By Chris Cook — a former director of the International Petroleum Exchange.
By Chris Cook — a former director of the International Petroleum Exchange.
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)
This will rattle your teeth. Hope someone has Mr. Cook's back.
8 comments:
Hope someone has Mr. Cook's back.
Messing with "the primal forces of nature," isn't he.
Brave as well as extremely smart.
Foolish. Setting up a new market system to beat a US-dominated market system is like s frontal assault on the US Army in the teeth of American air superiority.
The CIA had probably finished gaming out how to bend this market to its (and I trust, our) purposes before Cook had finished writing this piece.
Computer viruses, speculators with mysteriously deep pockets unusually brazen Somalian pirates, refinery or pipeline mishaps (like the 1982 tranSiberian pipeline explosion*), playing the Russian need for high oil prices vs the Chinese need for low oil prices, etc... if Uncle Sam wants to throw a grenade in the swimming pool, there's not a lot anyone can do about it.
* http://www.damninteresting.com/the-farewell-dossier/
beowulf: "if Uncle Sam wants to throw a grenade in the swimming pool, there's not a lot anyone can do about it."
That's why it is called the American Empire. And if need be, the legions are standing by for the signal.
Uncle Sam may not have the upper hand here:
http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG07Ak02.html
"Uncle Sam may not have the upper hand here"
I doubt the US Navy will have any trouble keeping the Strait of Hormuz open (however Tom's the Navy man here, I'd like to hear his opinion of this situation).
In any event, its good to have friends.
"Saudi Arabia has reopened an old oil pipeline built by Iraq to bypass Gulf shipping lanes, giving Riyadh scope to export more of its crude from Red Sea terminals should Iran try to block the Strait of Hormuz, industry sources told Reuters."
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/28/us-saudi-oil-hormuz-idUSBRE85R0KT20120628
I doubt the US Navy will have any trouble keeping the Strait of Hormuz open (however Tom's the Navy man here, I'd like to hear his opinion of this situation).
The brass will give the president and NSC the cost benefit analysis through the defense secretary.
This is not just about Iran either. Lots of balls in the air in this matter. Military action will be last resort, rather than to teach Iran a lesson. Much more at stake.
I should add that the nightmare scenario for the Pentagon is a Russia-China-Iran coalition, which is an impossible war for the US to win and come out of in one piece. There's a line to be drawn, and I doubt it is in US interests at the moment to find out just where it is by pushing at it.
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