First Shots Fired In The Currency Wars - 4

Read my lips No New Peace

This series is about a strategic advantage in one subcategory of the oil wars (First Shots Fired In The Currency Wars, 2, 3).

I started this series about this time of year in 2009.

The dangers inherent in the struggles for the substantial sources of oil, as suicidal as they may be, continue unabated in our modern world today, but the difference today is that we have a president who asks "why can't we use nukes?" and a national "security" head who believes in war first, questions later (Five things to know about new Trump adviser John Bolton).

The danger arising is, in large part, about the "petro dollar" which is a subject that Americans pay too little attention to:

"On March 26 China will finally launch a yuan-dominated oil futures contract. Over the last decade there have been a number of “false-starts,” but this time the contract has gotten approval from China’s State Council.

With that approval, the “petroyuan” will become real and China will set out to challenge the “petrodollar” for dominance. Adam Levinson, managing partner and chief investment officer at hedge fund manager Graticule Asset Management Asia (GAMA), already warned last year that China launching a yuan-denominated oil futures contract will shock those investors who have not been paying attention.

This could be a death blow for an already weakening U.S. dollar, and the rise of the yuan as the dominant world currency."

(China Prepares Death Blow To The Dollar). The current mood with Russia and its petro dollar viewpoint are not encouraging:

"Russia pulls out of the petrodollar

In addition to cutting off natural gas supplies to Europe, Russia has also "just pulled itself out of the petrodollar," reports Zero Hedge.

The story quotes Bloomberg.com stating that Russia "may unseal its $88 billion Reserve Fund and convert some of its foreign-currency holdings into ruble."

This is further explained by Mac Slavo at SHTFplan.com who explains, "What we are seeing are the strategic moves that will eventually catalyze the next great war. And make no mistake, this is exactly what's in store for the world should these escalations continue." - Natural News

(The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 12). Things are looking war-ish, but that is not the initial takeaway:

"The important takeaway is that China has created the first unassailable and above-ground challenge to the petro-dollar oil trade. To break the world’s use of the dollar as the sole settlement currency for oil required the right contract issued by a country the U.S. can’t immediately invade and conduct a regime change operation in – like in Iraq and Libya.

Russia wins here because now there is a path for its Urals grade to become an international benchmark like WTI and Brent. And since Gazprom prefers to price its long-term gas contracts based on underlying oil prices rather than the more volatile natural gas price, this is also a win in the long run for them."

(Surging Russian-Chinese Trade Pressures Petrodollar). The aggressive Trump tariffs and building of a warmongering administration lately are additional irritants to those who are marshaling domestic and foreign economic forces against us.

"Why can't we use nukes" was once more obvious than it is now to those who have gone blind:

"The most dangerous of these has barely been reported. A very important study in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published in March 2017, reveals that the Obama nuclear-weapons-modernization program has increased “the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three—and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” As the analysts point out, this new capacity undermines the strategic stability on which human survival depends. And the chilling record of near disaster and reckless behavior of leaders in past years only shows how fragile our survival is. Now this program is being carried forward under Trump. These developments, along with the threat of environmental disaster, cast a dark shadow over everything else—and are barely discussed, while attention is claimed by the performances of the showman at center stage."

(The Nation, emphasis added). This is the "DNA" of the oil wars (The Universal Smedley - 2; The Peak Of The Oil Wars, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13).

The previous post in this series is here.

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