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Dollar exit for oil trade?
F William Engdahl, Asia Times
Arab oil-producing nations and some of the world's largest oil consumers including China and Japan are reliably reported to be planning a long-term exit from pricing their oil trade in US dollars. If true, it would spell the death knell for the dollar as the world's reserve currency and for the United States as global economic power.

Ever since Washington tore up the Bretton Woods treaty in August 1971 and went onto a "dollar paper reserve system" instead of a dollar backed by gold, the United States, as the world's most powerful military power, has been able to dictate financial terms to the world. Nations like Japan and later China, dependent on US export markets, would dutifully invest their trade surplus dollars into US government debt, in effect financing wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan, which they opposed. They saw no choice.

...According to a leaked report from Arab Gulf oil producers, there have been a series of secret meetings in recent months between the major Arab oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, and reportedly also Russia, together with the leading oil consumer countries including two of the three largest oil import countries - China and Japan.

...The secret plan was first reported by respected Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, in the British newspaper The Independent. [2] Fisk claims to have confirmed the existence of the plan from Arab as well as Hong Kong Chinese sources. I have confirmed from very senior and well-informed Gulf sources that the talks are real...
(9 Oct 2009)
sent in by EB contributor William Tamblyn

A financial revolution with profound political implications
Robert Fisk, The Independent
The plan to de-dollarise the oil market, discussed both in public and in secret for at least two years and widely denied yesterday by the usual suspects – Saudi Arabia being, as expected, the first among them – reflects a growing resentment in the Middle East, Europe and in China at America's decades-long political as well as economic world dominance.

Nowhere has this more symbolic importance than in the Middle East, where the United Arab Emirates alone holds $900bn (£566bn) of dollar reserves and where Saudi Arabia has been quietly co-ordinating its defence, armaments and oil policies with the Russians since 2007.

This does not indicate a trade war with America – not yet – but Arab Gulf regimes have been growing increasingly restive at their economic as well as political dependence on Washington for many years. Of the $7.2 trillion in international reserves, $2.1trn is held by Arab countries – China holds about $2.3trn – and the nations interested in moving away from dollar-trading in oil are believed to hold over 80 per cent of international dollar reserves...
(7 Oct 2009)
As I am sure that most of of us have heard by now, this story has been vigorously denied in the mainstream press. -KS

Maverick economist says markets will lead us to be greener
Lynn Moore, The Gazette
With this article, we begin a new feature in Business Observer that we're calling Question Period. A couple times a month, we'll corral a notable person and sit them down for a question and answer session on the hot-button topics of the day.

Economist Jeff Rubin cemented his reputation as a maverick when he left his position as chief economist at CIBC World Markets, and a 20-year-career there, to publish a book about the end of cheap oil and the end of globalization, as we know it.

In 2000, Rubin had told Calgary's Petroleum Club that oil - then at an alarming 10-year-high of about $30 per barrel - would rise to $50 within five years. In 2005, he was among the first to correctly predict $100 oil.

Now, he says oil will break $200 as the economic recovers...
(7 Oct 2009)
EB reader Alan Hammaker comments:
In 2003 a business writer for the Montreal Gazette declined an invitation to a talk by Richard Heinberg due to Heinberg's being "apocalyptic". Six years later, other writers for the Gazette are succeeding in bringing reality to the fore. And Jeff Rubin's Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller quite capably manages to convey a range of topics, such as EROEI and the second law of thermodynamics, in accessible, colloquial language.