The GCC might usefully set up a "Gulf Clearing Union", with a "Value Unit" consisting of the amount of the different types of Gulf produced energy one US dollar will buy at the launch date.
After that point such a "Petrodollar/ Petrodinar" would of course diverge from the terminally sick deficit-based dollar.
The Iranian OPEC rep - Kazempour Ardebili - told me a couple of years ago in the context of the - now almost mythical Iranian Oil Bourse - that he has been advocating an OPEC "Bank" and Investment Institution (to all intents and purposes a similar outcome to a Clearing Union and Carbon Fund) for almost 20 years now.
As is becoming clear, interest rates have (due to a toxic combination of securisation and credit derivatives) become an almost entirely ineffective - and indeed counter-productive - tool for Central Banks, which now to all intents and purposes are entirely irrelevant to the "real world" economy going to hell in a hand-cart. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
I can't get my head around the possible consequences of THAT might be... You can't be me, I'm taken
So instead of saying a deficit we could just as easily state it as a surplus.
As one of my economics teacher said, just put it into the other pocket and call it what it is. Rutherfordian ------------------------------ RDRutherford
No relationship to reality whatever. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
On another order of things...
IMF: How the IMF Can Help Promote a Collaborative Solution to Global Imbalances (Remarks by Rodrigo de Rato, Managing Director, International Monetary Fund, April 4, 2006)
The problem is that good economic performance rests on a shaky foundation, because of large and continuing global imbalances. By definition, imbalances have two sides to them. The most visible aspect of the global imbalances problem is a large deficit in the current account of the balance of payments of the United States--almost 6½ percent of GDP in 2005, and expected to be as high again this year. The other side if the coin is large surpluses in the external accounts of other countries, including oil exporters such as Russia and Saudi Arabia, Japan and the emerging market countries of Asia, especially China. In some of these countries, current account surpluses have contributed to a very large build up of international reserves by central banks. And in the United States, repeated current account deficits have resulted in growing external indebtedness.
Of course being a skeptic you must realize that any organization is always looking for relevance for itself.
Les non-concessional loans are being made and thus it needs to spend its resources in other fields that it does not know about fully yet. Rutherfordian ------------------------------ RDRutherford
