Venezuelan move to replace US$ with the €uro

[....]

Venezuelan move to replace US$ with the €uro upsetting Washington more than Saddam's €uro conversion last November

VHeadline.com editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes:

A move by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Frias to replace the US$ with the €uro is seen as upsetting Washington more than when Iraq's Saddam Hussein started using the €uro for oil transactions last November ... precipitating the US-led action to invade Iraq. Beltway bullies are now said to be angered by Venezuela's decision to barter oil with thirteen other Latin American countries, dealing moves to dollarize South America currencies. Intelligence reports say that while the US was able to pull the wool over the international community and ally with Britain's Blair to bulldoze action against former Iran War ally Hussein, the situation with Venezuela is proving more difficult.

While there has been political pretext to cold-shoulder Chavez Frias and his government for supposed links with Cuba's Castro and Libya's Khadaffi, the United States is loathe to do more than to give subversive support to anti-Chavez elements in Venezuela fighting against the Venezuelan President's domestic war against political and economic corruption which have permeated the South American country for the last half-century.

International finance experts see how the US dollar has been devaluing against the €uro, as important players on the international scene convert to the European currency for more stable transactions ... Russia, China, North Korea and Malaysia have begun holding €uros as important hedgings in their foreign exchange reserves as faith in American greenbacks floats down the river.

CIA and other intel organizations, including Britain's MI5, now fear that the next step is that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is about to switch to €uros ... the immediate effect would be a massive devaluation, perhaps sparking of domino-effect devaluations worldwide in US$-related foreign reserves and foreign debt calculations.

With a massive budget deficit, the United States is running scared of latest intel that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on the brink of converting to the €uros and the opinion held by many OPEC ministers is that the conversion is an inevitability ... the only question left is WHEN?

Arab sources claim that €uro conversion across the Middle and Far East is a rational step to counteract the United States' capacity to "wage further illegal wars (a.k.a. State-sponsored terrorism)" around the world and that any prolonged occupation of Iraq by US/British forces ... and any move towards withdrawal of Iraq from the OPEC cartel ... will only precipitate "remedial action" by like-minded Arab nations to protect their own best interests over Washington's.

A significant step in this direction is that Iran is contemplating switching to the €uro and, as a result, is the latest object of United States undiplomatic interference ... an intel sources says "they are stimulating opposition forces, making covert threats ... the next step is destabilization and quasi-liberation warfare under the pretext of promoting US-style democracy but essentially aimed at maintaining the US dollar as a global transaction currency."

Ssource: http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=861

 

[radiofreecostarica]

Hey George...

stay out of Latin America!

 

[TIGER]

Next thing you know Hugo Chavez is supporting AlQaeda ...

 

[WildBill]

Who cares? An economy that is going in the gutter at the current pace of 20% a year and people worry about what currency he uses? Come on, this just reeks of economic ineptitude. For those that don't quite get the point of this (there really is none other than trying to highlight a beloved hero of the morons), listen here. What currency the world decides to use for actually transactions is as meaningless as the language they choose to do them in. The French love to moan and complain about how the world doesn't use French anymore, yet we could say the same thing about currency transactions. If a Japanese guy buys oil from a Saudi and they complete their business in dollars, yen, euros, krone, bolivars, etc...it means absolutely NOTHING! I repeat it again, it makes no difference to any exchange rate and no difference to the US economy. The trade in dollars is in the trillions, just because one country decides to use euros instead will make no difference. The US treasury controls the amount of currency issued. They do an absolutely stupendous job when you consider 3 to 4 times the currency in the US at any given time is actually outside the US and not facilitating transactions in the US economy. If the world decided they suddenly didn't want to use dollars in out of country transactions, the only way that would hurt the US economy is if all that money flowed into the US almost overnight and without warning. Then the Treasury couldn't act quick enough and inflation would follow. Otherwise if its not used for one transaction, it will be used for another. Duh. People aren't going to sudden say "oh I can't use it to buy oil, well guess its not worth anything".

This story does nothing but show the amazing level of stupidity of some of these far-left views. Lets punish the Americans, don't use their money. Haha, thats a real good one...

 

[JackDee]

"The trade in dollars is in the trillions, just because one country decides to use euros instead will make no difference."

You are right here bill, obviously Venezuela's few imports and exports are probably best suited with the euro at the time being and hence the shift, besides central americas economic (and political) ties with the u.s. are way too strong, and central america is the last place the european union would aim at overtaking the states in. However, there is a current trend of the dollar being overtaken by the euro, but most such trends in economics are both meaningless and shortlived. Certainly if a multitude of countries and not just one decided to scrap the dollar for the euro that would mean something though.

 

[WildBill]

The Euro is just picking up a little momentum, its not "catching up". There is a simple test for this. Go to some "uninterested" country, a place that isn't close to Europe or the US or does an unbalanced amount of trade with either. Go down the street and see what the people in this country would rather carry. Go to the currency changers and see what they offer. I would say maybe 1 out of 100 times they would accept Euros and not dollars. The people on the street will be at least 90% saying they take or have dollars. This is a simple test, yet most will tell you its just like this. The dollar holds its value because of its reputation. Euros are doing better just because it rightfully has a spot on the world exchange market, but in no way is it "catching up". That takes decades of well earned trust, something that Europe can't boast of and looking at their current state probably won't be able to for a long time.

To me a lot of the Euro moves have been for either a political reason, because the dollar will always be the default third-party currency so a change is for political reasons, or just because its becoming fashionable to do so. That is fine as long as the ECB is willing to do its proper role and handle properly the offshore nature of funds. That is harder to gauge than you think. If people truly have decided holding 100 Euro notes is a good thing then they better get the printing presses running. I rather doubt that, I think most of the transactions that are taking place now are one-off nature, where a country has usually historically done business in the dollar with a European partner or someone that does a lot of European business and now they switch to the Euro for practical purposes. That would probably be 80% of the changeover in transactional nature. Treasury holdings are going up as well, but that is part politics, part reality as most banks are accepting that the Euro is a huge part of the world's economy now.

When it comes to money, there is a simple economic explanation for most things. When people start doing things for emotional reasons and all its regarding is just currency, something that intrinsically has nothing of value, then you know there are distortions going on. If someone says screw Venezuela, I am buying my oil elsewhere, that is a true economic issue and affects tangible concerns. When someone says screw paying dollars for oil, I am using Euros, that is simply just a non-economic event.