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The article misses the elephant in the room; the US Dollar is in trouble. To get some view into why, take a look at the emergence of the AIIB (China's equivale

The article misses the elephant in the room; the US Dollar is in trouble. To get some view into why, take a look at the emergence of the AIIB (China's equivalent of the World Bank) and take a look at the reasons why the US has been in negotiations in Iran (Just about nuclear proliferation? There's a bit more to it... http://youtu.be/hs_2zzNyP_M http://youtu.be/hs_2zzNyP_M ). In short, the strength of the US Dollar is seen by quite a few people to be based on its position in international trade, and this position is being challenged (past challenges have led to wars, but that's not going to work for much longer, unless the US intends to start WW3). If the funding base is taken away, the US military is unlikely to remain the dominant force it is today. Kind of puts the TTIP/TTP/TISA deals into a new perspective too, international deals to reassert the US position by boosting the role of big business.

jorgecastillo 11y ago
Yeah I don't think so. You'd have to be a mad men to bet against the US Dollar short term (couple of decades). After that who knows!
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  It'd only take a few of the oil producing nations to start trading in a different currency. Back in the year 2000 one of those countries started trading oil in Euros. That country was Iraq. What was one of the first actions taken by the US after the US asserted control over Iraq? Replacing the Euro with US Dollars for oil sales. If one country doing this is enough to spook the US, what does that tell you? Furthermore, this has not been an isolated incident, other oil-rich countries have threatened to leave the US Dollar behind and have faced instability shortly after (Libya, Syria, etc...).
mark_l_watson 11y ago
I agree with you. Also, in addition to AIIB, I think that Russia and Japan are setting up some sort of international money clearing house. I am a USA citizen and I think it is in our best national interest to pull back a bit from the world stage. Nothing too extreme, just close a good fraction of our foriegn military bases and bring our troups home. We could still rapidly deploy if for example a close ally was invaded and needed our help. Troups returning to the USA would be very helpful in working on infrasturcture, etc. I think this would be fair to them as long as they got the same standard of living and benefits.

jorgecastillo 11y ago

Yeah I don't think so. You'd have to be a mad men to bet against the US Dollar short term (couple of decades). After that who knows!

ZenoArrow 11y ago
It'd only take a few of the oil producing nations to start trading in a different currency. Back in the year 2000 one of those countries started trading oil in Euros. That country was Iraq. What was one of the first actions taken by the US after the US asserted control over Iraq? Replacing the Euro with US Dollars for oil sales. If one country doing this is enough to spook the US, what does that tell you? Furthermore, this has not been an isolated incident, other oil-rich countries have threatened to leave the US Dollar behind and have faced instability shortly after (Libya, Syria, etc...).

mark_l_watson 11y ago

I agree with you. Also, in addition to AIIB, I think that Russia and Japan are setting up some sort of international money clearing house. I am a USA citizen and I think it is in our best national interest to pull back a bit from the world stage. Nothing too extreme, just close a good fraction of our foriegn military bases and bring our troups home. We could still rapidly deploy if for example a close ally was invaded and needed our help. Troups returning to the USA would be very helpful in working on infrasturcture, etc. I think this would be fair to them as long as they got the same standard of living and benefits.