To: lanceboyle
The article you posted is much too long to read on screen. And in fact, just reading the summary tells me that it is just a sophisticated leftist conspiracy theory.
All this is just a way to keep the euro from becoming the currency of choice of OPEC, lessening the importance of the dollar and the US? I don't think anyone would be thinking about the euro/dollar battle when we find a dirty bomb in Times Square, or a VX-filled UAV heading for Washington DC. That's what this war is about.
I didn't see any prominent monetary economists listed in the sources, so I'm uncertain how this article would be received by the experts. But one thing I caught in the addendum is that if the euro were to become the OPEC currency, the US would have to run a trade surplus, so that we could buy euros to buy oil.
That would mean that we would either would have to really cut back on our imports - and not buy German cars, French telecom equipment, Japanese VCRs, etc. - and/or really start pumping out our own exports. And I don't think the Euros or the developing nations really want that.
(And the people in this country that would be happy at such a prospect are the Buchanan-types.)
Besides, the euro has the disadvantage of being hooked to some bad economies that have fewer prospects for long-term health than the US's does. Does OPEC want that?
Anyway, it's pointless to posit these questions. The piece's author just wants to come up with a more complex way of saying that Americans are all greedy and all they care about is the almighty dollar.
And, no, I'm not going to go back and read the whole thing.
86 posted on
02/08/2003 6:25:27 PM PST by
michaelt
To: michaelt
All I was doing was to offer some alternate theory as to why the Europeans were so against the war in Iraq and why the mainstream press insists on insulting the intelligence of the American viewer and not throwing this factor in the debate. Yes, I gained it from leftist sources, but read the argument before discouting it as some wacky tinfoil hat theory.
"I don't think anyone would be thinking about the euro/dollar battle when we find a dirty bomb in Times Square, or a VX-filled UAV heading for Washington DC. That's what this war is about."
Probably not, but that is a straw-man argument, which didn't address what I was asking. Which is: Why the mainstream media has chosen to ignore the euro/dollar battle?
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