"US $: Forget Iran, the problem's at home"-- Asia Times

Mar 17, 2006

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HC17Dj02.html

US$: Forget Iran, the problem's at home
By John Berthelsen

Of all the things that could wreck the US dollar - and there are many - the projected Tehran oil bourse, which is tentatively scheduled to open on March 20 to trade Iran's crude and other petroleum products in euros rather than US dollars, is probably not among them.

The much greater threat to the US currency is the US current account deficit, which ballooned to 7% of gross domestic product in the fourth quarter of 2005. The announcement drove the euro up to 1.202 against the US dollar as skittish traders renewed their concerns about the world's fiat currency.

The opening of the Tehran bourse has been described by a Bulgarian university professor named Krassimir Petrov as ''the ultimate nuclear weapon that can swiftly destroy the financial system underpinning the American empire". Both Petrov and William Clark, writing in a publication called the Energy Bulletin, have suggested that the decision by US President George W Bush to attack Iraq on March 20, 2003, was to thwart then-dictator Saddam Hussein's move to price his crude in euros rather than dollars. They and other writers have been warning that Iran's decision to open a euro-denominated oil bourse places the mullahs in the same danger of being attacked.

That appears to be an overstretch. First, there is the question of how much crude an Iranian oil bourse would handle. Iran is the world's fourth-largest producer of crude, pumping only about 5% of the world total, and is unlikely to add much to that, according to a Hong Kong-based energy research analyst for a major US investment bank in an interview with Asia Times Online. He prefers to remain unnamed.

<snip>

No need Iran for that bush doing great job
Need premptive strike at home to stop threat