Free Republic

WORRIES about the dollar’s dominance of the global monetary system are not new. But debate about replacing the beleaguered dollar, whose trade-weighted value has dropped by 11.5% since its peak in March 2009, has resurfaced in the wake of a global financial and economic crisis that began in America. China and Russia, which have huge reserves that are mainly dollar denominated, have talked about shifting away from the greenback. India changed the composition of its reserves by buying 200 tonnes of gold from the IMF. None of this threatens the dominance of the dollar yet, particularly as a dramatic shift...

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Europe's single currency traded above the $1.50 level versus the U.S. dollar for the first time in 14 months on Wednesday, breaking through an important psychological barrier that will create added heartburn for euro-zone officials worried the strengthening currency will crimp opportunities for an export-led economic recovery. The euro touched $1.5001 versus the dollar just before 10 a.m. Eastern before temporarily retreating. It resumed its upward march later in the session, eventually notching a high at $1.5022. In recent action, the euro changed hands at $1.5002. See Currencies.

China, Russia, Japan & France are working with oil producers in the Middle East to permit currencies other than the U.S. $ to be used to pay for oil. This basket of currencies will include the Japanese Yen, the Chinese Yuan, and the €. It is reported in leading U.K. newspapers that this payment may be in a ‘new' currency that is made up of these currencies. It is also reported that a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar would form part of this ‘basket' While we...

“The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” the World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, said in a speech at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins. “Looking forward, there will increasingly be other options to the dollar.” Mr. Zoellick, who previously served as the United States trade representative and as deputy secretary of state under President George W. Bush, said that the euro provided a “respectable alternative” for financing international transactions and that there was “every reason to believe that the euro’s acceptability could grow.” In...

Looks like our enemies are trying to do us in. I wonder how we can combat this threat to the security of the United States and what are our leaders doing about this ???

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered the replacement of the US dollar by the euro in calculating the value of the country's Oil Stabilisation Fund (OSF). The edict, issued on Sept 12, follows a recommendation by the trustees of the country's foreign reserves, Iran's English-language daily The Tehran Times said on Monday, citing Iran's semi-official Mehr News Agency. The move was taken because the government wishes to protect itself from the fragility of the US economy and the weak dollar.

When the historical dust clears, Gordon Brown may find that his greatest achievement was to keep Britain out of the euro and preserve the fire-fighting powers of the Bank of England. Had we joined monetary union in 1999, interest rates set by the European Central Bank would have been near 2 per cent during the mid-years of this decade. This would have been like pouring petrol on the housing fire. The credit bubble would have been even worse. Once the bubble burst, the UK authorities would have been left with few instruments to cushion the downturn and manage the highest...

The tom-toms continue to beat for the implementation of a global currency -- which already exists in prototype, in the form of Special Drawing Rights, and has since Bretton Woods. The latest press release from the global currency promotion home office comes from none other than the UN, as reported in Bloomberg: The dollar’s role in international trade should be reduced by establishing a new currency to protect emerging markets from the “confidence game” of financial speculation, the United Nations said. Indeed. It should be noted that this blog postulated these very developments on several previous posts, including A Primer...

In the week when a new Agreement by European central banks regarding gold sales, only a tiny sale of 0.15 tonnes of gold was made the week before last and last week saw no sales. In the fist few months of the last year of the Agreement beginning on the 26th September 2008, as you can see from the Table below, around 140 tonnes of gold were sold by the signatories to the Central Bank Gold Agreement. Of these only just under 95.6 tonnes came from sellers who announced their intentions before they sold at the beginning of the Agreement....

Correlations come and go, but the path of Euros and gold rarely diverge vs. the Dollar... "The DOLLAR is not a good store of value," says Nobel prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz, finally catching onto the last nine decades' 95% loss of purchasing power. "Right now," he told an audience in Bangkok on Friday, "the Dollar is yielding almost no return and yet anybody looking at the Dollar has to say there's a high degree of risk." Gold also yields nothing, but your risk in the metal is somewhat lower. At least it will still be a lump of rare, precious, yellow...

For anyone wondering what to do with a couple of 20 euro notes stuffed in their sock drawer and no holiday in sight on the Continent, there may be a simple answer - spend them in the UK. From the south coast of England to a Birmingham nightclub and a major high street retailer to Edinburgh's Royal Mile, substantial numbers are saying yes to the euro. Quite where this trend began is in dispute. Dunster, a medieval village in Exmoor, lays claim to being the first place in Britain to accept euros on a par with the pound - not...

Iran, stung by European Union criticism of its handling of post-election unrest, yesterday accused the 27-nation bloc of meddling and demanded an apology before any more talks on Tehran's disputed nuclear programme. Iran's top military commander laid down the condition amid continued recriminations over the June 12 presidential election that returned hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power, beating rivals who insist the vote was rigged in his favour. "Because of the interference of this (EU) group in the post-election riots... they have lost their qualification to hold nuclear talks with Iran," Major-General Hassan Firouzabadi was quoted as saying by the semi-official...

The newly promoted First Secretary of State, speaking in Berlin, hailed the euro as a saviour that had brought stability to the European Union during financial turmoil. "It is perfectly clear that the euro has been a great success in anchoring its eurozone members during this financial crisis," he said.

European elections: extremist and fringe parties are the big winners Millions of voters deserted mainstream parties in the wake of the economic crisis David Charter and Rory Watson in Brussels Extremist and fringe parties were the beneficiaries as voters across Europe deserted mainstream parties or stayed at home in protest at the state of their economies. The Centre Left was set to be the big loser across the 27 European Union countries with the Centre Right consolidating its position as the largest group in the Parliament. Anti-immigrant parties gained MEPs in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, the Netherlands and Slovakia. Governing...

I was introduced to Airplane investigations more than 30 years ago as a young Airman while serving in Europe in the US Air Force as part of a military aircraft crash recovery detail. The recovered items of an outstanding military pilot that I retrieved for the investigation that day will always remind me of the terrible plain and loss that the Air France Flt 447 families are currently going through. It is for this reason that I have always paid particular attention to NTSB investigator briefings. I cannot recall a single time when the NTSB was not professional, forthcoming, always...

A majority of Swedes are in favour of adopting the euro as the country's currency, a new survey shows. The survey also indicates that voters supporting three of the parliamentary parties do not share their position for or against the euro. 47 percent of Swedes backed a move to the euro with 44 percent against in the survey by Novus on commission from the Liberal party and published in Dagens Nyheter on Monday. Male voters are more in favour of changing the Swedish kronor for the European single currency with 50 percent in favour and 42 percent against. Among women...

The U.S. dollar's day of reckoning may be inching closer as its status as a safe-haven currency fades with every uptick in stocks and commodities and its potential risks - debt and inflation - are brought under a harsher spotlight. Ashraf Laidi, chief market strategist at CMC Markets, said Wednesday a "serious case of dollar damage" was underway. "We long warned about the day of reckoning for the dollar emerging at the next economic recovery," Mr. Laidi said in a note. Mr. Laidi said economic recovery would weigh on the greenback as real demand for commodities, coupled with improved risk...

I have been watching the markets, commodities, etc day after day. Inflation is kicking in and will do so quickly. For example: Euro: 1.38 was 1.23 a few month back Pound Sterling: 1.59 was 1.36 a few months back. Gold: Through the roof at $949 from low $900 3 weeks earlier. Now, what do i do with my 401K, Mutual funds and stocks...do I invest in Gold, Silver? If so, any links?

The dollar tumbled against the other major currencies Wednesday, touching a fresh low against the pound for the year and a 4-month low against the euro as signs of a resolution to the financial crisis drove investors to riskier investments. Equities in Europe and the U.S. rose, as did oil prices, as cheered investors moved their cash into commodities and stocks. Since last summer, the dollar has tended to trade inversely to stocks, as fearful investors deserted their positions in emerging markets and commodities and jumped to the buck's "safety" lure. When stocks and oil prices trend higher, that pattern...

Euro zone contracted by massive 2.5 pct in Q1 Euro zone economy contracted by massive 2.5 percent in Q1, fourth straight decline Pan Pylas, AP Business Writer On Friday May 15, 2009, 7:24 am EDT Buzz up! Print LONDON (AP) -- The economy in the 16 countries that use the euro shrank by a massive 2.5 percent in the first quarter as a global recession sapped the industrial exports that Europe relies on for growth and jobs. Germany, the euro zone's biggest economy, saw output plunge by 3.8 percent as demand for its cars and factory machinery collapsed -- its...

A number of people recently have been commenting on how the economy seems to be showing signs of recovery, all without a single penny of the so called stimulus bill having been spent. The stock market has been moving up of late giving investors a sense of hope that the bottom has been reached signaling an end to their financial losses. Hope is good but false hope is dangerous as it causes people to lower their defenses against the oncoming train wreck. Counting on an economic recovery is occurring due to a bear market rally, is false hope. The psychology...

Geert Wilders has become the lightening rod for legal attacks by leftist allies of Islamists in Eurabia. Islam in Europe blog had this report about a French Human rights group that brought a cause of action under French law, concerning truth telling remarks in his New York speech last September. Note this bizarre basis for the French legal action and Wilders response. "Wilders made statements about French Muslims, about Muslims in Paris and Marseilles, which incite to racial hatred," says lawyer Yassine Bouzrou. He lodged the complaint on behalf of the organization, which is being studied by the public prosecution....

The U.S. dollar is rallying against both the Japanese yen and the euro -- up about 7% against the yen and 9% against the euro this year -- despite a steady drumbeat of bad news. What seems puzzling at first is perfectly understandable if you remember that a currency doesn't have to be perfect or even particularly solid to gain value. All it has to do is be less bad than the alternatives. And right now the U.S. dollar is the least-bad currency in the world. The comparative superiority of the dollar won't last forever, but I'd give it at...

During the current crisis we have several times heard invoked the wisdom of Milton Friedman about the unfeasibility of the euro as a currency surviving a recession. In an interview not long before his death three years ago, Friedman said: "The euro is going to be a big source of problems, not a source of help. The euro has no precedent. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a monetary union, putting out a fiat currency, composed of independent states. There have been unions based on gold or silver, but not on fiat money – money tempted...

CPAC Conference Home of Real Americans When I came to Washington D.C. to cover the CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) conference I knew I would be in a different world, after all the Democrats just took over the city. The folks attending the conference are the backbone of America. They are people that are going to be screwed, blued and tattooed by the Obama administration. What I did not know was that I would be surrounded by delusional left wing bloggers and what appear to be insane children that are the result of our failing public education system. I get...

... The European Central Bank is going to have to put a clothes peg over its nose and use its printing powers to rescue the region ...

Finance minister Peer Steinbruck said it would be intolerable to let fellow EU members fall victim to the global financial crisis. "We have a number of countries in the eurozone that are clearly getting into trouble on their payments," he said. "Ireland is in a very difficult situation. The euro-region treaties don't foresee any help for insolvent states, but in reality the others would have to rescue those running into difficulty."

Investors sold equities and piled into gold and U.S. Treasurys, a measure of the greenback against a trade-weighted basket of currencies, rose to 87.570 from 86.095 in late North American trade Friday. U.S. financial markets were closed for a holiday Monday. In recent weeks, the dollar and yen have benefited from safe-haven flows that are a reaction to the ongoing financial market crisis and economic slowdown, as investors shun riskier, higher-yielding investments in favor of lower-yielding funds. But news of the resignation of Japan's finance minister weighed on the yen Tuesday, giving the dollar an edge over its Japanese counterpart....

MELANIE PHILLIPS, WRITING EXCLUSIVELY FOR MAIL ONLINE Worried that Britain is going bankrupt? Cheer up – we’re about to be bought up by the Islamic world. A report by International Financial Services London reveals that Britain’s Islamic banking sector is now bigger than that of Pakistan. The study says that the UK has by far the largest number of banks for Muslims of any western country. The UK now has five fully ‘sharia-compliant’ banks – providing products which prohibit interest payments and investment in alcohol or gambling firms in accordance with Islamic sharia law – while another 17 leading institutions...

Swiss voters gave a resounding "Yes" today to an agreement extending the right of European Union citizens to live and work in Switzerland, despite fears of immigrant labour and job losses in the deepening recession. Official results showed 59.6 per cent of voters had backed the deal, renewing an existing agreement allowing migrant workers into Switzerland and extending it to new EU members Bulgaria and Romania. Swiss workers also have access to EU countries.

TO AID THEIR AILING COMMERCIAL banks, central banks in Europe have relied on huge currency swaps, borrowing nearly $400 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve. But as European commercial banks and European currencies deteriorate, repaying all that money to the Fed is becoming ever more difficult. Some believe the Fed's swaps to prop up Europe's banks are a foolish bet. "[Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke's assurances aside, I don't see how they can easily be repaid," warns Gerald O'Driscoll, senior fellow with the Cato Institute and formerly with Citigroup and the Dallas Fed. Here is how the swaps work. The Fed...

There will soon be 65 regional currencies in operation alongside the EU's, but the financial authorities are not worried yet... If you live in the Bavarian region of Chiemgau, you can exist for months at a time in a euro-free zone of hills and lakes with a population of half a million people. Restaurants, bakeries, hairdressers and a network of supermarkets will accept the local currency: the Chiemgauer. Notes are exchanged freely like legal tender. You can even use a debit card. Petrol stations are still a problem, but biofuel outlets are signing up. Dentists are next. The Chiemgauer...

The Brussels elite are pretending the question does not arise, but the financial world knows the question is there, hanging over the entire European Union economy: is the single European currency going to break apart? One answer was given last week by the Swedish economist Gabriel Stein at Lombard Street Research: 'Euro RIP - not yet, but not unthinkable. Why not? The grass might indeed be greener on the other side of the fence.' Another answer was given by the hedge fund boss Hugh Hendry, founding partner of Eclectica Asset Management: 'I fear it is becoming more likely that the...

Real interest rates of minus 2pc set by Frankfurt for German needs led to a Spanish property bubble of fearsome scale. Construction rose to 16pc of GDP, trumping the British and US bubble by large margins. Spanish companies tapped the euro capital markets as if there was tomorrow. Reliance on foreign borrowing reached 10pc of GDP, among the world's highest. Wages went up and up. The result is a current account deficit that is also 10pc of GDP. Now what? A country with full control over all levers of economic policy can claw its way out of such a hole....

The time has come to deliver, but, will he? The ECB rate decision is what we have been waiting for all week. Maybe the downgrading of Greece yesterday and the potential downgrades of Spain and Portugal could put Trichet and Co. under further pressure to justify deeper cuts rather than the widely expected 50bp (2.50%). With the FX market trading on interest rate expectations, one would expect the EUR to gain major traction with 50bp ease or more, just like Cable last week. But, we are talking about the ECB and historically they have a tendency to disappoint! The US$...

The European single currency, which turns 10 on Thursday, could face a painful adolescence if the economic crisis and demographic pressures wreck its family’s finances. The eurozone’s 16 members, once Slovakia joins on Thursday, can be grateful they did not suffer overwhelming foreign exchange turmoil along with widespread financial turbulence this year, experts said. “We would probably have had a series of currency crises” that could have hammered some countries had they kept their national monies, former German central bank president Hans Tietmeyer said last week. A leading actor in the euro’s launch, Tietmeyer stressed that an important element was...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/margareta-pagano/margareta-pagano-europe-will-not-allow-a-modern-greek-tragedy-1418578.htmlCannot be posted. This article is about how Euro's printed by Greece's central bank are to be avoided, and the monetary and economic problems in the EU. This writer believes that the EU will not let Greece "fail," and if it did it could mean all the Southern EU states leaving.

This week, I had to give thought to something I haven't considered since my kids were young: Just what kind of a present do you get for a 10-year-old? In this case, the 10-year-old isn't a child. It's a currency. The euro - now coin of the realm for 16 nations – celebrated its first decade on New Year's Day. So why would we at Hard Assets Investor care about a fiat currency that's just managed to shake off its training wheels? Two reasons. Well, one and a half, really. Reason One: No other currency in the world could be...

What happens when a fly falls into a coffee cup? The Italian - throws the cup and walks away in a fit of rage. The Frenchman - takes out the fly, and drinks the coffee. The Chinese - eats the fly and throws away the coffee. The Russian - drinks the coffee with the fly, since it was extra with no charge. The Israeli - sells the coffee to the Frenchman, the fly to the Chinese, Buys himself a new cup of coffee and uses the extra money to invent a Device that prevents flies from falling into coffee. The...

The international financial crisis has set off a radical change in thinking in Britain about the euro, EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso said Sunday. While acknowledging the majority opposition in Britain to embracing the euro, Barroso told French radio: "We are now closer than ever before." He added: "I'm not going to break the confidentiality of certain conversations, but some British politicians have already told me: 'If we had the euro, we would have been better off'." Sterling has suffered major falls in the credit crunch which has seen Britain, like other governments, spend massively in recent months to...

We aren't allowed to even link in the posting source URL box or excerpt this source, but this article is worth a look: CLICK ME

This is a serious thing, it is the loss of economic sovereignty of our nation http://www.newsmax.com/morris/?s=al&promo_code=719C-1 Bush Hands Over Reins of U.S. Economy to EU Wednesday, November 19, 2008 2:28 PM By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann Article Font Size The results of the G-20 economic summit amount to nothing less than the seamless integration of the United States into the European economy. In one month of legislation and one diplomatic meeting, the United States has unilaterally abdicated all the gains for the concept of free markets won by the Reagan administration and surrendered, in total, to the Western European...

Hello, I'm Arnold. I teach history - and a bit of das future too, as I view things.. In ze 20th century, America was big. Ja. But not as big and important as you "yanks" seem zu think. SHUT UP!! By now, wir find our selbst in ein totally different world. GM, Ford and America are bancrupt and every sane person today putsch their trust in ze €uro and God bless my grandmutter's überundunterundschwishendieheimatpatriotischen unterwear für that, like I use to say! Ze reason we Europeans decided to break your financial backbone, namely ze dollar (monopoly money manufactured by illegal...

The dollar rose through $1.40 against the euro for the first time in three weeks on Wednesday as hopes were raised that the US government would push through its bail-out of the financial system. Analysts said the dollar was also supported by increasing signs that financial institutions outside of the US were suffering in the wake of the credit crisis. Hans Redeker at BNP Paribas said the euro’s poor performance against the dollar this week – the single currency has dropped more than 4 per cent – was due to relative balance sheet adjustments at financial institutions. He said European...

The US dollar gained on the euro Wednesday on demand for US dollars from foreign banks and ahead of a Senate vote on the $700 billion bailout proposal and a proposal to raise FDIC protection on deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. The euro declined ahead of Thursday’s meeting of the European Central Bank, where Eurozone interest rates are expected to be held at 4.25 percent. In late morning trade in New York, the dollar traded at $1.4030 to the euro. The pound weakened against the dollar and the euro after the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply reported that its...

David Scholey, former director of the Bank of England and ex-chair of Warburg, likes to say that in financial crises it is never too early for officials to panic. Nobody could make that claim of today's Bank of England, Treasury and No 10 - or of the parliamentary opposition. The British financial, official and political class have been astonishingly inactive about the gathering financial crisis - only as Armageddon has loomed has there been any sign of the necessary urgency. However here we are in the aftermath of the nationalisation and forced sale of Bradford & Bingley (B&B) and Britain...

Oil prices tumbled more than $6 a barrel Monday, briefly slipping below the $100 level as traders bet that global demand for petroleum products will keep falling despite a planned $700 billion U.S. financial bailout. A stronger dollar also weighed on crude prices as investors who bought oil and other commodities as a hedge against inflation sold their contracts. Light, sweet crude for November delivery fell as low as $99.80 a barrel in morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange before edging up slightly to $100.28, down $6.61. The contract fell Friday $1.13 to settle at $106.89. Crude has...

"Is it a debate for now?" asked Nick Clegg, Lib Dem leader and ex-MEP, of British entry to the euro. "No. I think it's off the radar screen," he said at his party's annual conference this week. Like Gordon Brown, he gave the stock response to the decade-long question: "We'll join when the time is right." Even in this era of wild currency fluctuations and financial meltdown, there's no appetite in Britain for joining the single currency. But, in Nice last weekend for the informal meeting of EU finance ministers and a heavyweight conference on financial supervision organised by thinktank...

An almighty crash has been averted, very narrowly. There is no guarantee that the revolutionary actions of the US government will prevent a full-fledged global slump, but at least we now have a fighting chance. By taking the colossal wreckage of the credit bubble onto its own books in a $700bn (£382bn) taxpayer sink, Washington has forestalled a run on the world banking system, and may hopefully have saved the viable core of modern capitalism. * * * We will find out soon enough whether the rest of the world can respond with such dispatch as the hurricane smashes into...

LONDON (AFP) – The euro on Tuesday slid below 1.45 dollars for the first time since February as the market anticipated lower interest rates in the eurozone and stronger growth in the United States, analysts said. In early London trade, the European single currency dropped to 1.4467 dollars, the lowest point since February 12. It rose from this level to trade at 1.4524 dollars in late European trade, compared with 1.4606 dollars late on Monday in London. Elsewhere, the yen fell slightly after Monday's abrupt resignation of Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda. The pound meanwhile struck a record low versus...