Gulf Arabs review currency pegs to dollar

Gulf Arabs review currency pegs to dollar

ABU DHABI
13-Jan-07

GULF Arab oil producers are reviewing currency pegs to the falling dollar and could decide as early as March whether to keep or change their exchange rate regime, the United Arab Emirates central bank said.

Governors of the six Gulf central banks will meet in March in Saudi Arabia and may agree to switch to another currency or currency basket, Governor Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi said. They may decide to leave the pegs as they are and any changes would have to be approved by Gulf Arab rulers, he said.

"We might come up with a decision that says we are OK and stick to the same (regime), or we could come to the conclusion that we need to change," Suweidi told Reuters in an interview.

It was the first acknowledgement that the Gulf might not stand by a currency regime designed to prepare for monetary union in 2010, although markets began speculating about a revaluation last year as the US dollar fell around 10 per cent against the euro.

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http://www.bruneitimes.com.bn/details.php?shape_ID=16941

Published: 12/01/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)
Dollar may fall further this year

By Shakir Husain, Staff Reporter

Dubai: The US dollar will further fall this year and the GCC states need to take steps to protect their dollar assets against depreciation, economists said yesterday.

"We see the dollar continuing its decline. At the end of 2007, we see the euro at $1.27 and the pound at $1.88," Standard Chartered economist Monica Malek told Gulf News. She said efforts by the UAE and Qatar to diversify their foreign exchange reserves made sense as they provide protection against the dollar's weakness.

Eckart Woertz, an economist with the Gulf Research Centre, said: "The peg should be modified to reflect the GCC's trade relations with Asia and Europe."

http://archive.gulfnews.com/articles/07/01/12/10096274.html

US DOLLAR HEGEMONY:
THE SOFT UNDERBELLY OF EMPIRE (AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO USE IT!)

by Rohini Hensman and Marinella Correggia

Introduction

What we intend to argue below is that if the US's ability to undertake imperial conquests like that of Iraq depends on its obvious military supremacy, this in turn is ultimately based on the use of the US dollar as the world's reserve currency. It is the dominance of the dollar that underpins US financial dominance as a whole as well as the apparently limitless spending power that allows it to keep hundreds of thousands of troops stationed all over the world. Destroy US dollar hegemony, and "Empire" will collapse.

David Ludden's article 'America's Invisible Empire' (1) sums up the problem of the world's most recent empire with remarkable clarity. Constituting itself at a time when decolonisation was well under way and other empires were disintegrating, US imperialism could never openly speak its name. Initially, it disguised itself as the defender of democracy against communism; when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the pretext became the "war against terror". National security and national interest were invoked as the rationale for global dominance.

Ludden's description evokes the image of US citizens (and a few others) living in a Truman Show world, a bubble of illusion created by state deception and media complicity that prevents them from being aware of the reality of empire, although everyone outside can see it only too clearly. It sounds quite credible that ëthe empire will not be undone until its reality and costs become visible to Americans' (p.4777). However Ludden's claim that 'US taxpayers and voters pay the entire cost of the US empire' (p.4776) is less credible. If that were true, many more Americans would see their empire and oppose it; the Democrats would have put up a principled anti-war, anti-occupation candidate at the recent presidential elections, and the overwhelming majority of the US electorate would have voted for her or him. But it is the rest of the world that has been paying for the US empire: that is why it is almost invisible within the US.

As Emmanuel Todd wrote,(2) an imperial economy depends on drawing wealth from abroad, without any reciprocity. The US is now more dependent on the rest of the world than the rest of the world on the US. This explains their behaviour: not only their strategic need to get their hands on the world's resources, but also their need for hegemony. To counterbalance their economic dependence, they must keep themselves - at least symbolically - at the centre of the world. They must demonstrate their 'omnipotence': that is why they wage so many wars against militarily weak enemies. At the same time they must appear as benefactors à hence their whirlwind tour of the countries devastated by the tsunami disaster in order to make use of the photo opportunities it provided.

http://www.sacw.net/free/rohini_marinella30012005.html

People are waking up.