Iranian Oil Bourse Opens for Business: A Final Step Toward US Dollar Collapse & Preemptive Nuclear Strike
Infowars | May 9, 2006
https://infowars.com/articles/economy/iranian_oil_bourse_opens_for_business.htm
By Daniel L. Abrahamson
The impending opening of the Iranian International Oil Bourse (IOB), set to commence trading next week on the island nation of Kish, strongly increases the chances of an imminent nuclear American-Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear and financial facilities. The electronic oil bourse, much discussed by terrorism expert Webster Tarpley, appears ready to launch in the coming weeks or even days. Because it will offer oil in euros, it may trigger the rapid collapse of the U.S. dollar.
Over the past four days, the Western media has finally ended their blackout and acknowledged the possibility of an imminent dollar collapse, as gold reaches nearly $700 an ounce.
On Friday, May 5, the Associated Press covered the oil bourse with their article “Iran wants oil market in Euros.” The article warns of a rapid decline in the dollar while feebly attempting to minimize the importance of the oil bourse.
Nevertheless, the AP quotes a top Wall Street analyst who gives a far more realistic assessment: “But if one day the world’s largest oil producers allowed, or worse demanded, euros for their barrels, ‘it would be the financial equivalent of a nuclear strike,’ said A.G. Edwards commodities analyst Bill O’Grady.
‘If OPEC decided they didn’t want dollars anymore,’ he added, ‘it would signal an end of American hegemony by signaling an end to the dollar as the sole reserve currency status.’
Incredibly, some neocon warmongers are now openly calling for a strike on Iran because of the bourse.
On May 8, Bush apologist Jerome Corsi penned an editorial entitled “Iran Signs It’s Own Death Warrant.” Corsi is the same GOP hack who helped sponsor the Swift Boat ads & wrote Unfit for Command during the staged 2004 presidential election. In his article he admits a major reason for the US invasion of Iraq was the oil-for-euros policy of Saddam Hussein, and warns of China’s interest in the oil bourse.
He then goes further, predicting an imminent US attack: “If Iran wants also to seriously threaten the dollar’s position as a dominant foreign reserve currency, a war becomes almost certain. The Iranian oil bourse may never be mentioned by U.S. policymakers as a official reason the United States decides to go to war with Iran, but it may end up being the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
According to Forbes, the bourse may open this week. In their May 7 coverage, they suggest the electronic oil market is ready for trading: “Iran’s oil ministry on Friday also made a move to establish an oil-trading market denominated in euros instead of U.S. dollars, granting a license for the bourse, according to a report from the country’s state-run television.”
Warren Buffett who is a well known Rothschild banker is predicting demise, Bill Gates, George Soros are all predicting economic demise
The Forbes coverage echoes another article from April 26, when the Iranian state media reported their oil-for-euros market will open some time in the next week. Iranian Oil Minister Kazem Vaziri-Hamaneh made the announcement at the 10th General Assembly of International Energy Agency and consultations with OPEC member states.
Meanwhile, Reuters is reporting the bourse will not open for another two months, based on quotes from President Ahmadinejad.
So assuming the bourse opens sometime between now and the next two months, how might it disrupt the fragile geopolitical balance which has reached near Cuban Missile crisis proportions?
Clearly the economic threat of the Iranian Oil Bourse is one of the main motives behind the pending US invasion, rather than the bogus official claims of a nuclear threat. The National Intelligence Estimate from the US State Department acknowledges Iran is at least 10 years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Even the more hawkish estimates from within the White House estimate Iran is at least three years away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
On April 30, Al-Jazeerah reported the oil bourse has widespread international support, and “Some of the major oil-producing countries such as Venezuela (which has boosted its economic ties with Iran) and a few of the larger oil consuming countries, most notably China and India, have already announced their support for the IOB.”
The Al-Jazeerah article, entitled “Petro-Euro: A reality or distant nightmare for U.S.?” warned that the Iranian oil bourse could sink the U.S. dollar and lead to the rise of the euro as the world’s reserve currency: “Such a move could lead to a collapse in value for the American currency, potentially putting the U.S. economy in its greatest crisis since the depression era of the 1930s.”
The same article mentions how Saddam Hussein’s decision to trade oil for euros in 2000 may have been a major trigger for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Al-Jazeerah also quotes American security expert William Clark as predicting that “if Iran threatened the hegemony of the U.S. dollar in the international oil market, the White House would immediately order a military attack against it.”
Before this week, the mainstream media had tried desperately tried to blackout news about the bourse. A small mention came in a UPI article from April 25, while an April 2 piece in the San Francisco Chronicle warned, “the bourse would rival the New York Mercantile Exchange and International Petroleum Exchange in London — the twin centers of the oil-trading world. They quoted the cogent analysis of finance scholar Krassimir Petrov, who wrote, “The Iranian government has finally developed the ultimate ‘nuclear’ weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American Empire.”
Why would Iran’s oil exchange present such a threat to the U.S. dollar and worldwide economy?
The dollar accounts for more than two thirds of all central bank reserves worldwide because all international oil transactions have to be in US Dollars. This reserve status creates a constant demand for dollars, despite the underlying weakness of the U.S. economy. Hence, central banks are willing to overlook the massive trade and budget deficits are expanding with on-the-books Federal debt at record highs over 9 trillion and a fiscal gap estimated at $72 trillion.
But the United States is an economy on life support and nearing default, ravaged by agreements like NAFTA, CAFTA, and MFN trade status with China (all under the auspices of the WTO). The industrial and machine tools factories in America have been eviscerated, with Ford posting a quarterly loss of 1.2 billion. GM posted a quarterly loss of $325 million and both companies had their bonds cut to junk status back in 2005.
Ravaged by capital flight, mired in debt, and borrowing $2 billion a day just to stay afloat, the U.S. economy is increasingly reliant on this petrodollar reserve status. The vast size of U.S. liabilities means that any threat to the dollar hegemony could result in a rapid currency collapse, sinking the world into recession. Hence the dire threat of the Iranian Oil Bourse, which may put an end to the fiat currency charade that began after the US defaulted on its gold payments in 1971.
On Wednesday May 3, the dollar fell to one-year lows against the euro and the lowest level since 1970 against the Canadian dollar. A Telegraph article entitled “Dollar drops as great sell-off looms” described the impending currency crisis as the dollar loses its role as the world’s reserve currency: “Greenback liquidation comes amid growing concerns that global central banks and Middle East oil funds are quietly paring back their holdings of US bonds… Gold leapt to a 25-year high of $660.95 an ounce on fears the dollar decline could spiral out of control, disrupting the global financial system.”
The demise of the dollar looms as the Federal Reserve stopped releasing M3 money supply numbers on March 20. Some unconfirmed internet rumors claim the Fed recently ordered 2 trillion greenbacks printed. While such reports may seem outlandish, new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech in 2003: “”The US government has a technology called a printing press that allows it to produce as many US dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”
A February 6 article in the London Telegraph expounded on Bernanke’s reputation as an inflationist. Discussing Bernanke’s position, they wrote: “Ultimately, the Fed can flood the system by buying any kind of asset, or even dropping bank notes from helicopters, he said. The speech earned him the epithet ‘Helicopter Ben’”
Even before Bernanke took over, Alan Greenspan helped direct the Fed’s desperate scheme of raising interest rates 15 times since June 2004, vastly increasing liquidity, and debasing the value of the U.S. dollar.
The Financial Times reported on May 16 that the dollar was facing a freefall collapse, in an article entitled “Fears for dollar as central banks sell US assets.” The article explained the recent sell-off in the dollar was triggered by dollar divestiture by the European central banks: “The world’s central banks were net sellers of US assets in March for the first time since September 2002, according to figures that may hint that the recent rebound in the dollar will be temporary. Central banks sold a net $14.4bn in US assets during the month, the largest sale since August 1998, the US Treasury revealed.”
Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin recently warned of a dollar collapse on April 21 at the opening spring session of the International Monetary Fund. He said “Russia cannot consider the dollar as a reliable reserve currency because of its instability. This currency has devalued by 40% against the euro in recent years.” Two years ago Russia had nearly 90% holdings in US dollars and today that proportion has fallen to below 80%
The same IMF conference featured the release of the 2006 World Economic Outlook, which warned of a U.S. dollar collapse due to global trade imbalances, spiraling U.S. debt, and the demise of the petrodollar reserve standard. The report stated, “global current account imbalances are likely to remain at elevated levels for longer than would otherwise have been the case, heightening the risk of sudden disorderly adjustment”.
“Disorderly adjustment” is the newest banker euphemism for the hyperinflationary spiral and worldwide economic depression which will accompany a dollar collapse.
On that same day of April 21, Sweden’s Riksbank recently cut their dollar holdings in half, instead favoring Euros. Reuter reported that, “The Riksbank’s move to increase its euro holdings to 50 percent of its reserves follows comments by Gulf central banks in recent weeks that they are considering increasing the share of the euro in their reserves.
Back in February, South Korea shocked the currency markets when they announced a move away from dollar-denominated assets. CNN reported, “The world’s fourth-largest stockpile of reserves that has traditionally been held in U.S. debt…announced its plans to diversify into other currencies.”
Recently, currency shocks hit Iceland and New Zealand and may portend a global financial meltdown in its growing stages.
Within hushed circles on Wall Street, the impending dollar crisis has been long predicted. In a closed-door meeting in 2004, the chief economist at Morgan Stanley, Stephen Roach, predicted “economic Armageddon.”
The Boston Herald article reported Roach’s comments as follows: “His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic “Armageddon…Roach sees a 30 percent chance of a slump soon and a 60 percent chance that ‘we’ll muddle through for a while and delay the eventual Armageddon.’”
Furthermore, globalist banker & billionaire Warren Buffett is warning of a global financial collapse and the precipitous drop in the dollar in a recent Forbes Magazine. Buffett has personally bet at least $20 billion against the U.S. dollar, and said the following: “The rest of the world owns $10 trillion of us, or $3 trillion net. If lots of people try to leave the market, we’ll have chaos because they won’t get through the door.”
The article went further: “A continuing fall in the dollar ‘could cause major disruptions in financial markets. There could be unpredictable side effects. It could be precipitated by some exogenous event like a Long-Term Capital Management,’ Buffett says, referring to the 1998 collapse of a steeply leveraged hedge fund.”
Warren Buffett is strongly linked to the Rothschild banking syndicate, and Buffett brought Arnold Schwarzenegger to visit Lord Jacob Rothschild’s Buckinghamshire estate in 2002. Buffett’s dire warnings likely represent the sentiments of the Rothschilds and others in European financier dynasties dominating the New World Order overclass; those who hope to use a worldwide depression to seize assets, depopulate the planet of “useless eaters,” and create a unipolar biometric police state.
Billionaire software kingpin and Bilderberg member Bill Gates, who recently hosted Chinese police state head President Hu, is also shorting the dollar. Last January, Bloomberg quoted Gates predicting a collapse in the U.S. currency. He said, “I’m short the dollar. The ‘ol dollar, it’s gonna go down…It is a bit scary. We’re in uncharted territory when the world’s reserve currency has so much outstanding debt.”
The article continued: “Gates’s concern that widening U.S. budget and trade deficits are undermining the dollar was echoed in Davos by policymakers including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”
Billionare investor and Bilderberg member George Soros recently predicted a U.S. recession in 2006 or 2007. Soros believes a the U.S. housing bubble will soon collapse the Fed cannot keep the dollar propped up. Soros told the press, “Europe is growing relatively well… but a hard landing in the U.S. will be associated with a decline in the dollar which would hurt the European economy,”
It appears the bottom may already be falling out from under the financial house of cards. The fiat currency ponzi scheme, bloated by hundreds of trillions in leveraged derivatives, hedge fund manipulations, and unregulated currency speculation, appears doomed.
In order to stave off the collapse, the Cheney-led shadow government and their Anglo-American financiers appear ready to launch a nuclear strike on Iran, destroying the oil bourse and shutting off oil shipments at the Straits of Hormuz. The larger invasion of the Middle East appears to be a plan to limit oil supply and spike prices, as Iraq is now a net importer of oil since the US/UK invasion.
Major financial analysts are now warning of $100 a barrel oil, which will further increase the artificial demand for dollars and perhaps stave off a dollar collapse. Daniel Eustulin and Jim Tucker reported back during the 2005 Bilderberg, the New World Order announced the coming $120 a barrel oil at the secret world government conference.
In June 2005, Eustulin wrote, “A British Bilderberger noted that oil at $120 a barrel will greatly benefit Britain and the US, but that Russia and China would be the biggest winners.” Eustulin also described the strong sentiment for moving away from the dollar and toward the euro for the world currency.
The insane plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons will likely backfire, producing massive financial upheaval and a potential Armageddon. The inflation caused by $120+ a barrel oil will likely shock markets and the dollar will collapse regardless. The neocon endgame, which envisions an apocalyptic “World War 4” conflict against Russia and China, might become inevitable.
The Anglo-American oligarchs and their shadow government moles inside the Pentagon are desperate to stop the Iranian bourse and seize control of the oil in the tiny region Khuzestan (containing 90% of Iran’s oil wealth). The possibility of a false-flag terror attack or joint Israel-U.S. strike during the months of May or June appears more grave than ever before.
Recent mainstream reports of TOPOFF 2 drills in Chicago and a wave of other drills in May and June may indicate the final planning for a synthetic terror attack is complete.
Additionally on July 18, the Defense Department is wargaming a military strike on Iran. The Asia Times reports, “This particular ‘war game’ is the fifth in a series that has also included exercises related to a purported avian-influenza pandemic and a crisis in Pakistan.’
Will the Iranian Oil Bourse be the final straw that inspires one of these drills to go live? Will the potential dollar collapse usher in the next stage in insane neocon push toward World War Three?