CURRENCY CONVERTER

Interesting piece in the most recent Lobster by the editor Robin Ramsay who quotes Karen Kwiatkowski, a recently retired Air Force Lt Colonel who included the following in the neocons reasons for the invasion of Iraq (after the fact that sanctions were working and dissatisfaction with Kuwait and Saudi:
“The conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the food for oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this by the way long before 9/11, in November 2000 – selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program, aren’t very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second larget oil reserves on the planet would be moving to the euro. The US dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it’s not backed up lile it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could be massive , almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May (2003) switched trading on Iraq’s oil back to the dollar.”

More from Lobster here.