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Saturday
Lagniappe
How
an Iranian 'Oil Bourse' Threatens the American Empire
By
Len Har
It's
been over seven years since the US had real or competent leadership
and now a neo-ape man may precipitate
our return
to the cave! Iran's planned oil bourse threatens not only Bush's
simplistic view of the world, it strikes at the the coffers
of "big oil". Isolated by mysteriously cut internet
cables, Iran --if it is not nuked --will this month begin trading
oil in currencies other than the dollar. Bush's cave man response:
Nuke Iran! Kill, kill!
Bush's response to Iran's "Oil Bourse",
his response to the end of American empire, is pre-stonge
age in nature.
Indeed, the US empire will collapse when the dollar collapses.
Because we have an ape-man and not a real President, the consequences
will be tragic.
A commenter to this blog used the term "sunset fuel" to
describe oil and our dependence upon it. The world grows more
dangerous as oil becomes increasingly hard to find, more expensive
to produce and refine. We should have expected the world to
become a much more dangerous place under those conditions.
In its decline, oil becomes disproportionately important, nations
more desperate, Bush more belligerent.
Monitoring the news today --it is clear that the Middle East
cables were deliberately sabotaged and the effect has been
to cut Iran off the internet. Isolating a nation by cutting
off its systems of communication is a first step preceding
a military attack. Bush no longer cares about even the pretense
of pre-text! His charge that Iran has weaponized grade fuels
is universally and credibly debunked. The real threat is to
the poohbahs of US empire --the Military/Industrial complex.
Bush doesn't care. Nuke Iran! Kill, kill!
Like the US today, Rome had currency problems,
one of the reasons for its fall. When Rome attacked Dacia,
it was for
the gold. Much of the history of Rome is the history of how "empire" became "enterprise",
how the Praetorian Guard become the Military/Industrial complex.
The first known Roman "money" was a lump of bronze
aptly named "aes grave", literally, "a heavy
lump of bronze". An "aes grave" weighed about
seven pounds. Traded by weight, it required slaves to carry
it around.
A more portable medium --the true coin --would
not appear until about 89 BC. It was quickly debased with
increasingly
thin silver plating as more coins were needed in circulation
than could be backed up by the "real" wealth of empire.
By one AD, a tiny new bronze aes or "as" was introduced.
It had no real intrinsic value but it was easy to carry around.
One could gain entry to bath houses or free public performances
with it. Even then it was just a token to help "ushers" and/or
doormen keep track of the number of folk.
By the mid 60s AD, Nero was alloying silver with cheaper metals,
a process virtually impossible to detect. Nero thus set the
precedent and standard not only for later emperors but politicians
of almost every stripe. Briefly, Nero did what almost all politicians
do. He swindled the people in order to put more coin into circulation.
By the time the Praetorian Guard auctioned
off the empire to Didius Julianus, the transaction would
be completed in Drachmas
(Greek currency) not Roman the sestercius or the ass. The smart
money had already dumped Roman coinage. In the late Empire,
it was hoped that new coins --the silver "nummus" and
the gold "aureus" -- would restore confidence during
periods of devastating inflation.
Much is made of the "gold standard". In fact, it
doesn't matter. If someone like Ron Paul restored the Gold
Standard in the US, the economy would melt down for several
reasons. First, economies must grow or die. Fixing the currency
to a finite standard guarantees that it will be necessary to "debase" to
accommodate a growing population, growing demand for money
itself. Secondly, given US weakness, encouraging Americans
to dump bucks for metals, will only hasten the death cycle
of the dollar. Perhaps Paul believes it is already too late
--so just kill it off and be done with it. Nevermind, the millions
who would literally starve or wind up on the streets.
The "Gold Standard" is a myth that is easily demagogued.
In fact, a nation's currency is really backed up by its total
productive capacity. If the nation is at work and productive,
we could use monopoly money! And we have been for years. Who
the hell would cares for so long as we stay out of jail and
pass "Go"? American prosperity was always behind
and had always "backed up" the strong dollar. Paulian
thinking that we need only jack around with the currency to
restore American prosperity is literally "backward".
It doesn't work that way.
Productivity needs help. US economic expansion had always
been fueled by an abundance of natural resources --land, timber,
water, farm land, metals, et al. The nation's history was changed
forever when oil was discovered first in Pennsylvania and,
when that ran out, Spindletop in Texas. For over a century,
US economic expansion was backed up by oil. The US was an oil
producing nation. Oil was better than gold or silver in that
it had much more intrinsic value than either metal.
Oil not only lubricated the engines, it fueled them. In the
process of turning it into gasoline, it was discovered that
its plastic properties could make an almost unlimited number
of doodads, some of which had utilitarian value and some only
value as playthings and baubles.
From
internet reaction to my previous article on the US v Iran: If
Iran is attacked it will have nothing or next to nothing
to do with the oil bourse. It will be because the PNACers have
targeted Iran, because, like Iraq, it is not a puppet state,
and, in the Neocon "mind" thus presents an "existential
threat" to the greater Israel that they imagine.
It has everything to do with Neocons who are most certainly
supporters of the Military/Industial Complex or, more accurately,
the Military/Oil Exploitation complex. Neocons are all about
empire and oil is at the heart of American empire. Israel is,
in fact, just a convenient ally as were the various puppet,
vassel states of Rome --many of which were in the Middle East.
Certainly, when oil is no longer traded in
dollars, it is not only the dollar that will collapse. It
means that the US
--on the bad end of a huge balance of trade deficit --will
no longer be able to afford to import goods or services. For
a nation that long ago (Reagan years primarily; See Vidal,
cited) gave up its role as a manufacturing nation, this collapse
will be monumental, catastrophic. The fact that oil had been
traded in dollars was the only thing propping up the dollar.
That there was a demand for dollars because there was a demand
for oil meant that you could continue to buy imported goods
with dollars. Now --imagine a world in which no other country
need "purchase" dollars in order to import oil! What
if oil producing nations agree to accept other currencies?
What if they refuse to accept dollars? Go to Wal-Mart or even
your local supermarket. Almost everything on the shelves is
imported. Imagine a shop owner refusing to accept as payment
for anything in the shop your worthless dollars !
As Gore Vidal pointed out, the US empire ended
in the eighties, when the US became a net debtor nation.
GOP regimes since have
only made the situation worse. Just as empire became the business
of Rome, empire had become the "business" of the
US which no longer produces enough to employ its population
let alone export to the rest of the world. Most US consumer
goods are imported from China, sold in Warl-Mart, discarded
in America. America's best days are over. We live in the twilight
of empire.
Len
Hart is
a Houston based film/video producer specializing in shorts
and full-length documentaries. He is a former
major market and network correspondent; credits include CBS,
ABC-TV
and UPI9 . He
maintains the progressive blog: The Existentialist Cowboy
(http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/).
Petroleumworld does not necessarily
share these views
Editor's
Note: This commentary was originally published by oped news,
on Feb 11th 2008. Petroleumworld reprint this article in
the
interest of our readers.
This commentary was originally air by Oilsandreview
on March 2008. Petroleumworld reprint
this
article
in the
interest of our readers.
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