Blood and Oil
Featuring Michael T. Klare
The notion that oil motivates America's military engagements in the Middle East is often disregarded as nonsense or mere conspiracy theory. In Blood and Oil, bestselling author and Nation magazine defense correspondent Michael T. Klare challenges this conventional wisdom and corrects the historical record. The film unearths declassified documents and highlights forgotten passages in prominent presidential doctrines to show how concerns about oil have been at the core of American foreign policy for more than 60 years -- rendering our contemporary energy and military policies virtually indistinguishable.
In the end, Blood and Oil calls for a radical re-thinking of US energy policy, warning that unless we change direction, we stand to be drawn into one oil war after another as the global hunt for diminishing world petroleum supplies accelerates.
Michael T. Klare
Michael T. Klare, one of the world's most renowned experts on energy and security issues, is the Five College Professor of Peace and World Security Studies (a joint appointment at Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst) and Director of the Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS), positions he has held since 1985. He is the author of thirteen books, including, most recently Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books, 2008), Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (Metropolitan Books, 2004), and Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (Metropolitan Books, 2001).Professor Klare has written widely on U.S. defense policy, the arms trade, global resource politics, and world security affairs. He is the defense correspondent of The Nation magazine and a Contributing Editor of Current History. He also regularly contributes to various publications including Foreign Affairs, ForeignPolicy, Harper's, International Security, Le Monde Diplomatique, Newsweek, Scientific American, Technology Review, Third World Quarterly, and World Policy Journal. Professor Klare received his B.A. and M.A. from Columbia University in 1963 and 1968, respectively, and his Ph.D. from the Graduate School of the Union Institute in 1976.
Published on Sep 15, 2013
Canadian billionaire businessman Ned Goodman predicts the end of the U.S. Dollar as the world's reserve currency. He says the transition out of the U.S. Dollar will become, "...quite ugly." He delivered the lecture at Cambridge House's Toronto Resource Investment Conference 2013 on Thursday, September 12, 2013.
Published on Jul 24, 2013
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When will the economy collapse? Well in order to answer that question we have to first look at the geopolitical variables holding the dollar up, in particular the petrodollar.
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The derivatives black hole: http://business.time.com/2013/03/27/w...
America's economic death spiral: http://moneymorning.com/ob/economist-...
65% of Americans think hard times are ahead:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/159596/ame...
The markets are in a bubble. The mainstream is in denial:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-...
Iraq pulled off of the Dollar in 2000: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/me...
The real reason for the Libyan war: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfr...
Iran pushing to end the petrodollar: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/co...
Russia sending warships to Syria: http://www.timesofisrael.com/russia-s...
Two more countries have joined in the trend started by China and Japan recently, where they bypass the dollar and instead use their own currencies directly in trading. Iran and Russia have made a trade agreement on January 7th which moves the stakes ever closer to the end of the US's reign as the reserve currency.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and Russia have replaced US Dollar with their own currencies in their trade ties, a senior Iranian diplomat announced on Saturday.
Speaking to FNA, Tehran's Ambassador to Moscow Seyed Reza Sajjadi said that the proposal for replacing US Dollar with Ruble and Rial was raised by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in a meeting with his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Astana on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting.
"Since then, we have acted on this basis and a part of our interactions is done in Ruble now," Sajjadi stated, adding that many Iranian traders are using Ruble for their trade deals.
"There is a similar interest in the Russian side," the envoy stated, adding that that Moscow is against unilateral sanctions on Iran outside the UN Security Council, specially the recent sanctions against Iran's Central Bank (CBI).
China and Japan Getting Away From Dollars
The run on the dollar that could sink its value and bring surprise hyperinflation to the U.S. has just become a lot more likely. China and Japan are moving to trade each other’s currencies directly rather than use the U.S. dollar as an intermediary. This won’t lead to an immediate shift away from the dollar. After all, the greenback has constituted around 60% or so of central banks’ foreign currency holdings since at least 1995, according to the IMF’s COFER report.
The change does signal to other nations that America’s main trading partners will favor the illiquidity risk of less-traded currencies over the valuation risk of holding dollars tied to unsustainable spending. China and Japan do have debt problems of their own, but they may be wagering that two drunks trying to stand each other up over the Sea of Japan is less tiresome than levitating a much larger drunk off of his back from across the Pacific Ocean. They may even print some more of their own currencies just to have the liquidity to buy each others’ bonds. The Fed isn’t the only player around that can do quantitative easing.
The U.S. financial elite should take a breather from its construction of swap lines for the eurozone to pay attention to this news. America’s deficit spending since 9/11 constituted a transfer of wealth from Asian central banks and sovereign wealth funds to shareholders in U.S. defense contractors and Medicare vendors. Trade partners who opt out of petrodollar recycling will make it harder for the U.S. to peddle dollar-denominated debt outside the U.S., because there will be fewer nations willing to keep an inventory of dollars to buy it.
In any case, China and Japan have just quietly removed a source of demand for dollars. This deal is another sign of higher U.S. interest rates to come, hyperinflation or not.
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