Iran, the second-biggest producer of crude oil in the Middle East, has ``completely halted'' all oil transactions in dollars, the state-run ISNA news agency said, citing Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari.
Nozari said the U.S. currency was no longer reliable as the dollar continues to depreciate. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries has set up a team to study pricing oil in another currency, the INSA cited Nozari as saying. The measure is designed to prevent further losses in revenue to oil exporters, ISNA reported.
At the last OPEC meeting, Iran and Venezuela were pushing hard for a switch away from the dollar. Saudi Arabia was against this move and blocked further moves away from the dollar. In other words, there are a ton of politics involved with this as well. (h/t, http://www.bonddad.blogspot.com)
Since it has been bandied about until we're all blue in the face, let's just say that this could be spectacularly bad for the U.S. And, while we'll harp to the press and the international community about evil Iran having "nookular" weapons, we're really going to take this as a slap in the face as our currency devalues even more (if that's even possible), especially if other OPEC nations follow Iran's lead.
Those speculative plans for a March/April 2008 strike don't seem so implausible now, do they? Let us hope the Joint Chiefs are ignoring them.
1 comment:
Oh boy, we're screwed now. You can only imagine what this will do to the cost of gas and the economy.
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